There I Saw You, Night
by esplanade
Summary: "It wasn't as if he had stopped writing entirely. Quite the opposite, in fact. It was just that most of what he wrote ended up thrown into the fireplace at home. What was the sense in keeping something that was sub-par?"
1. As I Walked Out One Evening

_Sitting across from me, back against the wall, is a man who appears so harmless, it's nearly impossible to believe he can create anything but comforting stories. He frequently pauses when he speaks, unable to do anything but orchestrate the entire conversation as if he were writing it in one of his novels. But he is also carefully guarded, deliberate, and has none of the flash one would expect from a man of his renown. The other restaurant patrons are wearing suits; he is wearing jeans and a button-down. The earthiness, whether natural or fabricated, has a soothing effect on anyone lucky enough to speak to him. This is our author spotlight this week at_ Liber Weekly, _the crime writer who keeps you up at night: John Watson._

Kitty Riley [ _Liber Weekly_ ]: You're a surprisingly hard person to pin down, Dr. Watson. We were beginning to think we'd have better luck reaching the queen.  
John Watson: Elusiveness is an occupational hazard, I'm afraid.  
KR: Over the past years you've built a reputation for yourself in the book world, and it all started with –  
JW: _Boscombe Valley_.  
KR: Yes, _Boscombe Valley_. Did you have any idea, at the time, how the novel would take off?  
JW: I've been at this for years, and I _still_ don't know how the public will react to anything I publish.  
KR: Did you hope it would take off, then?  
JW: I'm supposed to say yes, aren't I? But honestly, I was just glad to be rid of it.  
KR: Why is that?  
JW: You spend that long working on something, it starts to wear you down. There comes a point where all you want to do is foist it on the public so you don't have to think about it anymore. [Laughs] Not to say I don't have a soft spot for it now, of course, but at the time I was glad to have it out of my hands.  
KR: The book turned you into an overnight success. An international bestseller. Ten books later, and you're revisiting some of _Boscombe's_ themes, yes? A man haunted by another man for past crimes?  
JW: I suppose it's an idea that keeps me up at night.  
KR: But this book, _Gloria_ , has a more modern feel to it.  
JW: Does it?  
KR: Yes. Victor Trevor took the world by storm. Is he inspired by a real person?  
JW: Hardly. No one that pleasant would associate with me.  
KR: That would make _Gloria_ your first book since _Boscombe Valley_ that isn't inspired by real events.  
JW: Yeah, the real world was getting very bleak. Even crime writers need a break now and then.  
KR: Do you think you'll go back to what you're truly best known for? Fictionalized versions of crimes that interest you? You've covered so many over the years, the Fritzl case, the Canadian Schoolgirl Killer, the West Memphis Three, and of course last year's bestseller based on Genie the so-called "feral child." Isn't it tempting to go back to that? To all the cases?  
JW: Yes and no. There's a certain catharsis, in fictionalizing things. I think it's one of the ways human beings cope with all the horrible things we have to see and hear. But the real world gets exhausting, even when it's your version of it. I needed a break from all that. It was time to get back to my roots, I suppose.  
KR: I understand you were in the army for some time.  
JW: Regrettably.  
KR: Have you ever considered writing a story based on those experiences?  
JW: Never. It's never been something I wanted to revisit. Besides, war is a different kind of crime than the ones I'm used to.  
KR: Does it feel like being haunted, like in _Boscombe Valley_ and _Gloria_?  
JW: Not as much as you'd think.  
KR: Do you ever find, even in books based on existing cases, do you find yourself inserting people you know into the stories? Fictionalized versions of people just like fictionalized versions of crimes?  
JW: Now and again, although it's been many years since I've done that.  
KR: When was the last time?  
JW: It wouldn't be right of me to ruin _all_ the mystery, now would it?  
KR: Will you at least shed some light on what you'll be working on next, now that _Gloria_ is hitting shelves?  
JW: I'm always working on _something_. That will have to be clue enough.

* * *

 _From a six year old edition of_ Liber Weekly:

Sherlock Holmes: The fundamental misunderstanding here is that poetry _means_ anything at all.  
Kitty Riley [ _Liber Weekly_ ]: Doesn't it? Doesn't all writing mean something?  
SH: No, not all of it. In fact, not most of it. But certainly not poetry. People worry so much about what a poem _means_ that they end up missing the point. The question you _should_ be asking yourself is, what does the poem _evoke_.  
KR: Explain.  
SH: A poem's job isn't to tell a story. It's to elicit an emotional reaction. If you want to tell stories, be a novelist. If you want people to think your work _means_ something, then be a _Pulitzer winning_ novelist. Otherwise it's a waste of your time.  
KR: Is poetry a waste?  
SH: Anything can be a waste. No writing has intrinsic value, only extrinsic, the value that readers assign to it.  
KR: You make it all sound very cold and devoid of heart. You have a sort of reputation, Mr. Holmes, of fabricating emotion, given that the poetry you write is so emotionally driven but you...  
SH: But I'm not.  
KR: Well, yes. Poetry isn't the typical avenue for someone of your disposition.  
SH: And what _would_ be suited to me, Miss Riley?  
KR: Science, perhaps.  
SH: This idea that writers all have a certain amount of mysticism and romanticism about them is outlandish. I've met enough other writers in my days to know that. Most of them are all ego, and very little heart, despite what their work might lead you to believe.  
KR: Don't judge the author by the book, like don't judge the book by its cover?  
SH: If that comparison suits you. But the author of anything, well, it doesn't really matter what they're like.  
KR: What about context for the work itself? Or authorial intent?  
SH: Both are meaningless. If people really wanted context, the about the author page would include more than four sentences. And it doesn't matter at all what the author's intent for anything is.  
KR: Why not?  
SH: Because ultimately, the reader will think what the reader wants to think. All readers are biased from the start, regardless of their claims otherwise.  
KR: What's next? After _Sic Transit_? Or are you tired of talking about that collection?  
SH: I feel like I've answered every conceivable question about those poems. And who knows what's next. That doesn't matter either.  
KR: If so little matters, then what's the point of writing at all?  
SH: What indeed?

 _Sherlock Holmes is the author of the poetry collection,_ Sic Transit, _winner of the T.S. Eliot Prize, the Costa Poetry Award, The Forward Prize, the National Poetry Competition, and the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize. He lives and works in London._

* * *

"Please try to get me out of some of these."

"John, I already got you out of enough of them. What is the point of being an author if you refuse to do the tours? You have to promote your work." John could hear Ella's exasperation through the phone. He hit the speakerphone button and leaned his head on his hands.

"It's not like they don't know who I am already, El. I've been around long enough. James Patterson doesn't need to do tours to sell books."

"It's part of the work. Just because you don't have to do so doesn't mean you should cut it out. It's hard for writers to build a public image."

"Maybe I don't want a public image."

"Look, if you don't want to deal with Barnes and Noble or Waterstones I understand, but the local shops? You're a big draw for them. If anything, think of it this way: you're putting food on the booksellers' tables."

"The tour for _The Silent Child_ was agonizing, Ella. The one for _Gloria_ is going to be beyond unbearable. Cut as much of it as we can afford to cut. I'm sick of answering people's questions. I wish they'd just read the damn thing and leave me alone." He reached out a hand to the Newton's cradle on his desk, pulling one of the silver balls back and letting it go, staring at them as they swung back and forth, the constant clacking oddly soothing.

"John, quit playing with that thing and listen to me."

John didn't make a move to still the silver balls. "What?"

"I've known you for ages now. I know sometimes the job gets exhausting. But you survived the military. You can survive a book tour. But I promise I'll cut what I can. And you know what? They're going to love _Gloria_."

"I'm sure."

"Do _you_ love it?"

"I don't know. I don't know if I love any of them."

There was a pointed silence on the other end of the line. John knew she would be sitting in her office, psychoanalyzing him. He reached out to still the cradle, and only then did Ella speak again.

"Don't forget the signing tomorrow night."

John hung up the phone and sighed.

* * *

Sherlock walked along the pavement by the Thames, hands deep in his coat pockets. The flat had become claustrophobic, and he had hoped being out in the open in the city would counteract the effect. It hadn't. If anything he felt more closed in by the hoards of people that apparently flooded the streets at night when he was ordinarily shut up at home behind closed curtains. When had he become such a recluse?

But he answered his own question even as he thought it: after _Sic Transit_.

The perk to being a poet, rather than a novelist, is that the people on the street rarely, if ever, recognized you. It was the closest one could get to being invisible even in a crowd. But that didn't make the crowds tolerable. The noise was the worst part. Why were human beings so goddamn loud all the time? Didn't they ever shut up? Why did everyone feel the need to drown out everyone else? It was like an unspoken competition between the billions of people on the planet, everyone trying to make the world notice them, when they had done absolutely nothing worth noticing.

The other writers – the ones who made their living monetizing human beings in magazine articles – had pestered him for a while when he was trying to make his exit from the public eye. They all wanted to know so much, when was the next collection coming out, what would it be about, who were his favorite authors, on and on and on, the same series of tedious questions. And then there came a point where he could no longer dodge these questions, could no longer put them off. When that time came, the questions became more serious. They all wanted to know why he hadn't put out more work, why he seemed to want to talk about anything _except_ his own work.

But how could he make them understand that there _was_ no work. And from the looks of things, there wouldn't be any for a very long time.

It wasn't as if he had stopped writing entirely. Quite the opposite, in fact. It was just that most of what he wrote ended up thrown into the fireplace at home. What was the sense in keeping something that was sub-par?

He had heard the stories about sophomore slumps from every writer or filmmaker he had ever met, but for the longest time he didn't believe the phenomenon really existed. He still didn't, really. The problem was perception. The world had reached a point where it almost expected an artist to fail on their second venture. So the quality of the work was irrelevant; the world would see failure no matter what the artist produced.

There were people who beat the curse, of course, people who could churn out book after book or film after film. And once they got to number three they usually managed to cement themselves in the creative world. It was just a matter of getting past number two, the project doomed regardless of its quality. It was all fear, in the end. Some people could handle the derision that often accompanied second works. He had discovered that he simply was not one of them.

Which was asinine. He had never cared what people thought of him in any other sense. But it mattered what they thought of his work. Without his work, what was he?

Evidently, he was the kind of man who wanders around London at night trying to make his brain fall quiet.

Earlier, a few blocks back, he had been stopped by some clueless tourists who wanted their photo taken. A man and a woman, in their late twenties, so transparent they may as well have been glass. The woman had straightened hair and thick mascara, and the man wore those horrendous knee-length khaki shorts that made him look like a teenager. Both of them had smiles that were a little too wide and falsely welcoming. They weren't married yet, but would be soon enough, and then likely would divorce five years down the road. People were so predictable.

They had handed him a smartphone, and he had been annoyed that operating it required removing a glove, but he took it all the same. As he held it out in front of him, framing the photo, they blathered on and on about how they were on their first real trip together, and how beautiful they thought English weather was – not nearly as gloomy as everyone says! – and how "magical" nights in London were.

"When we got here, I suddenly understood why there were so many British poets," the man said in a voice that Sherlock was sure he thought sounded sensitive and cultured. He snapped the photo and passed him the phone. "Do you live here?"

Sherlock only nodded, didn't want to dignify them with speech. Rather than take the hint, they both talked about how lucky he was to live in such a romantic setting year round. "It's a wonder you're not a poet too, living here," the woman said.

It had taken all of Sherlock's self control to not tell her very politely to go to hell.

It _was_ a wonder that he wasn't a poet. He had been one, once. And the worst of it was that that was still the primary facet of his identity. If anyone asked what he did, he always wanted to answer automatically with, "I'm a writer." But was he, really, if he produced so little over such a long period of time? That thought had haunted him for months now, creeping into the back of his mind when his guard was down. At what point did one cease to be something they have always been? And how did one ever get back to that person again? In the interim, he felt like he hardly existed. He imagined it was how soldiers felt when they came home. To them, they were always soldiers. Now they were civilians. And what the hell were they supposed to do with such a change?

But he had no great battles to show for his time in the literary trenches. Just old wounds.

Over and over, he would ask himself who he was. _What_ he was. But he never came close to an answer.

Maybe he hoped that these walks would inspire him enough that he would fine such an answer, but thus far they had yielded nothing. All he had gotten out of it was a thousand overheard conversations about how magical London at night was. He was so fucking sick of it. What did everyone find so damn magical about some lights strung up in trees by a river? About a ferris wheel putting on its own multicolored light show? About street lamps and flood lights and heels on pavement? There was nothing inherently magical about any of this. It was pretty, yes, but magic? There was no magic here. People always believed there was something about late hours that made them special, otherworldly. But in London, you couldn't even see the stars. He would know; he had tried often enough.

Sherlock had written so many words about the stars over the years, in one way or another. The artificial ones in the trees and on the tips of iron lamp posts didn't measure up, no matter how hard he tried to love them. However, they suited London well. Real stars were far too still and silent for a place like this.

He could understand someone seeing magic in the universe. But in a city at night? Never. Growing up, he noticed people turned night into something mystical, hushed late hour conversations and cheap takeout food, the knowledge that they'd be exhausted come morning, the fact that come sunrise, they would banish everything they'd talked about hours before into the no man's land between midnight and dawn. But night had never been that to him. His memories of it mostly involved sitting up alone working at home till ungodly hours before collapsing, waking up late the following morning and destroying everything he had put on paper before sunrise.

When he looked ahead of him and saw a very boisterous group of tourists, he decided he couldn't stand the company of so many exuberant strangers any longer. Avoiding making the slightest bit of eye contact with any of them, he stepped off the pavement to cross the street, burrowing deeper and deeper into the insulated stone and brick walls of the London night.

* * *

Mike Stamford's bookshop had always been one of Sherlock's favorites. It had both new and used books, stayed open late, and was designed in such a way that one could get lost entirely in the shelves like an animal camouflaged in leaves.

Regrettably, it was also a rather popular bookstore, and would occasionally attract authors for meet and greets, readings and signings. Mike had known Sherlock for years, and at one point he even tried to convince Sherlock to do a reading during a poetry festival he was putting on, but he very quickly learned Sherlock's opinions on such things and politely never asked again.

He had to weave through a cluster of people, the bell above the door announcing his presence. Blessedly, the people in the shop were too preoccupied to notice him slinking behind them. Somewhere outside the safety of the shelves, Sherlock could hear the murmur of voices, a low mumbling noise like bees buzzing. He pulled back farther into the dark corners of the poetry aisle. Mike always had the older editions mixed in with the newer ones, and Sherlock naturally gravitated toward the worn spines and cloth covers of the old books, running his fingers along them, scanning for the collection on his mind. It wasn't as if he didn't have copies of the collections at home; he had nearly every volume of poetry he could get his hands on. But he loved accumulating different editions, and any time he found a poem was stuck in his head, he would silence it by adding an edition. As a result he had nearly an entire shelf of Byron, nearly an entire case of Neruda.

Tonight it was Auden, a frequent offender in the catalog of Sherlock's mind. He nearly hated himself for allowing the poem to bore into his brain. It wasn't obscure or particularly revolutionary, a poem taught in literature classes all over the globe. But it was the thing that, lately, kept him up at night, staring past the electrical glow of his laptop screen into the empty mouth of the hearth.

But he had to have it on paper, a physical form, something he could glare at whenever he felt the need.

A few aisles away, he could hear the murmur die down, voices coming now one at a time. Half-listening, he caught the familiar questions as they drifted through the space between books.

What inspired you to write this book?

Do you think you'll ever write another book like the last one?

How do you stay so motivated?

What are you working on now?

Will there be a movie?

They were all questions he had heard in some form or another posed to various novelists who had come through Mike's shop. On the rare occasion a poet was the center of the night, the questions were always markedly different, always about existential dread and catharsis.

If Sherlock was being honest, he almost preferred the entirely unimaginative questions people asked the novelists. Everyone always expected some great meaningful response from a poet. From a novelist, a clever quip every few questions was all they required.

Lucky bastards.

He tuned out most of the talking, turning his eyes to the book in his hand, the pages yellowed with age. These were the best kinds of books. They felt more real, more grounded. All Sherlock had ever used newer books for was to take on long trips because he didn't care if he lost them. Hardback, cloth, green cover with a tattered yellow spine, dust jacket long since gone. An edge of the cover was a bit discolored, like its original owner had spilled coffee on it, but that didn't matter. It had the poem in it.

Sherlock walked to the end of the aisle as he flipped through the book, and in the process nearly ran into Mike, who had stationed himself at the edge of the shelves, leaning against one with a pleased smile on his face. Rather than even trying to make his presence known, Sherlock merely sidestepped him, feeling considerably safer once he was on Mike's other side, and therefore had a clear escape route. Mike was staring up the center aisle at the little gathering he'd orchestrated, practically beaming over the guest, despite it being highly unlikely that he could actually _see_ the person, given that even Sherlock could hardly catch a glimpse through the crowd.

"Who did you rope in this time?" Sherlock asked, glancing back down at a page in his book.

"John Watson," he said, a proud father at a son's graduation.

"Who?"

" _John Watson_ , Sherlock. The crime novelist."

"Whatever you say." Sherlock caught the slight movement in his peripheral vision, Mike shaking his head. He only knew about ten percent of the people who came to the shop. This person fell in with the other ninety.

The crowd shifted enough to open up a line of sight, and Sherlock glanced up the slightest bit to see who sat at the table up front answering questions. An unassuming, down-to-earth looking blond man, who Sherlock finally recognized from seemingly endless dust jacket photos and displays in Waterstones.

"What's so special about him?"

"He's a brilliant writer, Sherlock."

"He writes thriller novels."

"Incredible ones."

"I never saw the point in crime fiction. There are plenty of real crimes to read about."

"He's written about lots of real crimes before."

"Fictionalized, based on, whatever you want to call it."

"Well lots of people find police reports to be a bit dry."

"Why are they all fawning over him though? It's not like he's a Pulitzer winner." Mike said nothing. Anytime the answer to a question should have been common knowledge, he wouldn't answer.

As the silence between them stretched on, Sherlock reached into his pocket to retrieve money for the book, but when he held the note out, Mike just waved his hand away.

He could have left. He could have retreated back into the London night. But he didn't.

"You know, Sherlock, I think you'd quite like _The Silent Child_ , actually."

"Why do you think that?"

"The case it's based on is one you've mentioned to me before. Genie?"

"If I read about that case, it's for the sake of reading about language acquisition and neurological development. I don't need a watered down happy ending fairytale version of it."

"It's a very smart book. He was a doctor, you know. And it doesn't end happily."

"It doesn't?"

"No. It's very realistic. But none of the hopefulness you see in _Room_."

"What on earth is _Room_?"

"A novel, Sherlock," he said, still staring at Watson. Sherlock might as well have not been there. "Still, I think the two of you would have plenty to talk about."

Sherlock ignored the comment. Mike was always convinced he'd get along with one person or another. He hadn't been right yet. Although that was more Sherlock's fault than Mike's. There had been Sebastian, a literary agent who worked primarily with young adult fiction who appeared to be in a state of suspended adolescence himself. There had been Greg Lestrade, who wrote true crime books, but whose writing was so basic and his choice of cases so banal that Sherlock couldn't stand discussing crimes with him at all. He had gotten along half-decently with Molly Hooper, who wrote science textbooks, but she had been so clearly infatuated with him that it was physically painful. Oddly enough, the one he had gotten along with the most was Martha Hudson, his landlady, who wrote little domestic columns and articles for women's magazines. But generally, Sherlock dreaded any introduction of Mike's. He managed to find the strangest people. He also couldn't believe that Mike knew this novelist well enough to know how they'd get on.

He shut his book of Auden and looked around him for the nearest display, taking a few quiet steps to reach it, plucking one of the copies of _The Silent Child_ from the stack. The about the author section on the inside flap of the dust jacket contained a very simple photo of the man, and the text below it was notably brief: "John Watson was born and raised in Somerset. He served as a doctor in the military in Afghanistan. He currently lives in London."

More vague than a Wikipedia article.

The front cover of the book was a portrait of a girl's face, maybe thirteen, with her features partially obscured by the artistic equivalent of a camera blur.

Sherlock tried to wrap his mind around why the writer had been so preoccupied with the Genie case; it wasn't as if there weren't thousands of interesting medical marvels that a doctor could latch on to. He flipped through the pages, catching a few words here and there, unsure what he was actually looking for. And then he turned to the dedication page.

"For Harry."

He looked up at the man, sitting behind the table with body language that was clearly making an active effort to not appear defensive and unwelcoming. But he was still visibly uncomfortable. It didn't look as if the general public noticed, but Sherlock knew the tells, the little details, twirling a ring on his finger, pulling at a loose thread on his sleeve, tapping the pen against his hand. He was almost ready to rise from the table and bolt.

Sherlock heard the split second pause, the author waiting for the next question. And although there were people sheepishly raising their hands, gearing themselves up to speak, he ignored them and stole their moment from them.

"Who is Harry?"

Heads turned to find the source of his voice, a handful of whispers passing through the crowd, likely something to the effect of _how rude_. Even Mike was looking at him a bit incredulously.

Watson's eyes scanned around the room, finally landing on him. His shoulders were already more tense, a soldier used to attacks slipping into old habits.

"Sorry?"

Sherlock held the book above his head, the cover displayed for all the eyes that had turned to him. "Harry?"

"Not important," he said, smiling in a failing effort to remain polite. "Or relevant."

"Important enough to merit a dedication in a bestseller. The book is about a little girl, so a dedication to a man is less likely unless it's your agent or editor. You mentioned your agent and editor by name a few minutes ago, so it's not either of them. Family member or romantic attachment? Why him? What earns someone a dedication?"

Sherlock lowered the book as he waited for his answer, and was nearly ready to question the man again when he finally said, "Book dedications are only relevant in the moment they're made. I've known people to dedicate books to classmates they haven't spoken to in twenty years, a childhood friend, countless dead relatives, even celebrities. I've dedicated books to all sorts of people over the years, even men I fought with overseas, even Mike Stamford who owns this store. It's really not as full of hidden meaning as you're thinking it is."

"That doesn't answer the original question, Doctor, but since you're so visibly uncomfortable, I'll return the floor to the others."

The whispers rose again before John Watson said, "Next question," with an edge of harsh finality.

"You love to antagonize, don't you?" Mike asked.

"It was an honest question. Which I'd still like answered."

"Good luck. The only person more private than John Watson is you."

He attempted a whole slew of witty responses he could give to that remark, but ultimately failed.

Sherlock remained at the back of the crowd during the rest of the session, and when the fans began to line up for autographs, Sherlock stepped in toward the end, the copy of _The Silent Child_ nestled in the crook of his arm.

When he finally reached the front, he set the Auden down on the table, opening the novel to the title page and extending the book out to John. He was met with a look of pure irritation. And since presumably Sherlock broke the line of sight between John and the other fans, Sherlock noticed that he did absolutely nothing to try and hide his expression as he had earlier.

Neither of them spoke as John glanced between Sherlock and the book, slowly uncapping his pen.

"So?"

"So what?" John responded, turning his eyes to the page.

"Aren't you going to answer my question?"

"Hadn't planned on it, no." He ran the pen – roller ball ink, medium point – over the paper, sharp scratching as he scribbled his signature over the page.

"Who is Harry?"

"And who the hell are you, exactly?" He looked up at him, pen still hovering over the paper.

Sherlock began to smile before he could stop himself. "My name is Sherlock Holmes. Address of 221B Baker Street."

John snapped the book shut and handed it to him. "Why would I care about your address?"

"Useful information for when you ultimately decide to tell me who Harry is."

"I have no intention of ever doing that."

"You will, though."

"What makes you so sure?"

Sherlock smiled as he returned the book to the crook of his arm. "As I believe you'll appreciate the phrasing, I'm inclined to say, _because I can read you_. Wonderful to meet you, Doctor Watson."

He turned and cut through the crowd, passing Mike without a word on his way out of the shop. The brisk night air, when it hit him, seemed to wipe the smile from his face, replacing it with a creeping sense of dread.

Still, it wasn't until he was safely home that he realized he had left behind the book of Auden, carelessly set on the table. He cursed himself for being so caught up, distractions leading to the ultimate betrayal.

But _The Silent Child_ sat on his coffee table in Baker Street, ready and waiting, and his hands were already typing out the name "John Watson" on his computer.

* * *

John had signed three more books for grinning fans before he noticed the book sitting on the edge of the table. None of the people at the signing seemed to see it, and for a moment John wondered if he was imagining it, hallucinating. But the reality was simply that the people in line were blind to everything but him.

Between fans, John reached out a hand and slid the book across the table, laying it down on the chair next to him with his coat and satchel. He couldn't rationalize why he'd done it. He knew exactly who had left it there, and whether it was simply forgotten or deliberately placed there for him, he wasn't sure. But it was currently the only tie he had to the bizarre interloper. It would have to do.

Once the signing was over – he had done the rest of it on autopilot if he was being honest – John stood with Mike in the closed bookshop, chatting. Or rather, Mike chatted and John made every effort to pay attention when all he wanted was to go home.

"And I'm sorry about him, by the way."

John snapped his eyes back to Mike. He had gotten distracted at was staring absently at the display Mike had set up of all his books. For a moment, he found himself dissociating entirely, and the books were written by a man he didn't know.

"Sorry about who?"

"Sherlock, of course. I'm afraid he's always like that."

"You _know_ him?"

"Oh, yeah, known him for ages. Strange fellow, I'll give you that."

"Christ, that's an understatement."

"I've been recommending _The Silent Child_ to him for a while now. I hope he actually reads it."

"I get the impression that my kind of novels aren't really what he likes."

"What do you think he likes?" Mike asked, laughing a little.

"You know, something heavier, something _meaningful_ , like, I don't know, _War and Peace_."

Mike shrugged. "He always called the Russians unnecessarily bleak, so don't be too sure."

Suddenly the weight of the green and yellow book grew heavier in his bag. John had been so distracted at the time that he hadn't even noted what book it was, which title, which author. It was simply Sherlock Holmes' book. Once he realized this, he quickly made excuses about meetings and deadlines to Mike and threw around promises of lunches and free afternoons, anything to get him home faster.

On the cab ride home, he almost told the driver to go to Baker Street twenty times. After all, he knew the owner's address, it was only right that he return the man's property to him. But somehow the book felt like a key in a fantasy novel, mystical and sure to unlock something important. He could have pulled it out on the ride, but decided against it. The flicker of street lamps wasn't enough. The book merited a slower going-over; it demanded real light.

Thankfully, light was something John Watson had plenty of. Over the years he'd grown to hate dim rooms and kept his flat flooded with brightness from all sorts of lamps. When he had first come back from Afghanistan, he had gone so far as to even sleep with lights on, when he slept at all. And somewhere along the line, he'd never quite gotten fond of darkness again. So he shut the curtains to block out the blackness beyond his windows and sat down on his sofa. For a moment he just stared at his bag sitting on the table in front of him. But finally he couldn't still himself any longer.

He was not expecting a book of poetry. Granted, he wasn't that sure what he expected at all, but it wasn't poetry. Perhaps the childish characterization of poets as sensitive and thoughtful people was what made it so absurd, given the brusque nature of the man who had forgotten it. Maybe it was meant to be a gift, and that lack of personal investment was _why_ it had been forgotten. But Sherlock Holmes didn't seem the gift-giving type either.

John had never read poetry, not really. In all honesty, he read very little in general. But poetry had always escaped him, had never drawn him in.

Unfortunately, there were so many nights where John felt he would never be drawn in by anything ever again. Ella would say it was depression talking. John would say it was practicality. It wouldn't be the first time they had an argument along those lines.

Equally puzzling to John was the condition of the book. For a man who seemed so prim and put together, he had certainly picked a book that was nearly falling apart. His clothes had been expensive, so it wasn't as if cost was a factor. Why did the weathered hardback mean anything to Holmes at all?

And why couldn't John leave it behind, or return it, or at the very least allow it to rest for the night instead of letting it keep him awake?

He turned the book over in his hands finally, running his fingers along the edges of the yellowed paper. Auden. He had never heard of Auden.

By two in the morning he had read a good piece of the collection.

Though his head was beginning to kill him, he read on, and came to a poem that sounded vaguely familiar, perhaps a tiny piece of a long since forgotten literature class. But this time around, he could only read it in the context of Sherlock Holmes. He turned the page, his eye lingering on a stanza near the end of the poem. And for reasons he couldn't begin to understand, the stanza had the effect of a literary sucker punch, and forced him to finally close the book and walk away from it for the night.

 _O stand, stand at the window  
As the tears scald and start;  
You shall love your crooked neighbor  
With your crooked heart._

* * *

Sherlock couldn't manage a single act of productivity that night, although truthfully he felt as if he hadn't been genuinely productive in years. But all he had managed was a cursory search of the thriller novelist online and a great deal of staring at the ceiling agonizing over the forgotten book. Had he left it behind in the shop? Had he dropped it somewhere on the way home? He almost wanted to call Mike and wake him up just to ask him if he had seen it lying around anywhere, but showed – he thought – remarkable restraint in not doing so.

The search for information about John Watson had been equally futile. He had hoped that the internet would be able to provide more information than the blurb on the dust jacket had, but details about the author were notably sparse no matter where he looked. No details about his early days except the same note of him being from Somerset. There was a fair bit about his military service, but nothing about his family or personal life. Yet somehow, this man had cultivated his public image in such a way that his fans viewed him as family and felt like they knew him. He had an easy charm in his interviews that made him seem so personable, but Sherlock noticed that mostly his answers seemed designed to keep everyone safely at arm's length. Certain topics he avoided more than others. Any questions about his youth were immediately and skillfully redirected into another avenue of discussion, so expertly that the interviewers didn't seem to realize they'd been played. Questions about the military he answered, unless they were questions about the actual people he served with. Unlike most military men he seemed reluctant to talk about other soldiers he knew, giving no sentimental tales of brothers in arms and rescues and miracles. But he talked very casually about some of the terrible things he saw, as if the deaths and bombings didn't seem nearly as emotionally demanding as simple questions about his favorite movie or whether he was married or whether he came from a large family or – god forbid – questions about why he chose the subject matter he chose.

How could such a well known man be so unknowable?

He considered starting the book, but it was late, and he had already decided that any potential source of information deserved his full attention, not the distracted half-awake focus he currently had.

It was a toss up as to which item was more taunting: the copy of _The Silent Child_ sitting on his coffee table, or the once again blank page on his laptop with its horrid little blinking cursor.

Another night, wasted. Another night with no updates, no productivity, no words put to paper. But it wasn't as if he could force the words out, however much he may have wanted to. Instead he was forced to turn in, and as he tried so desperately to sleep, he found that all he saw when he shut his eyes were the typed out words from the poem, still trapped in the forgotten book and yet still taunting him even now:

 _O let not Time deceive you,  
You cannot conquer Time._


	2. A Magic Moment I Remember

"Why does everyone like this so much?" Sherlock asked from his seat in the reclined chair of the planetarium. A few seats to his left, Ida Cairns stood behind her podium, running through the new show that would begin the following day. Many times she would rewind the narration, tweak the projections, all these silly details that seemed to matter so much to her. It all looked the same to Sherlock. Pretty, yes, but the stars and planets were nearly impossible for him to distinguish in any meaningful way. More balls of gas and flame.

Technically, he wasn't even supposed to be there. The planetarium was closed to the public by that hour, but Cairns had gone to university with his mother. Closing times didn't apply to him.

He huffed out a sigh, wrapping his arms around himself. It always seemed colder in here, like Cairns and her cronies were trying to simulate not just the views of space but the unforgiving climate as well. But the planetarium drew in thousands of people every week. Surely there was an explanation.

"Well, not all of us can physically go to space, of course," Cairns said, moving constellations around on the ceiling above her. "So it's a decent substitute. And I like knowing that the children who come walk away with an appreciation for the universe. Their eyes light up like you wouldn't believe. It makes my science accessible to regular people."

"No, no, I know why _you_ like it. You're a scientist, and this is essentially your lab. I understand why you love it. But why do the regular people love it? Space is unfeeling stone and fire, so why do they find it so awe-inspiring and _special_?"

The silence between them was filled only by the calming near-monotone narration coming from the speakers somewhere in the dark abyss above them.

"Well, dear, here you are," she said, adjusting the brightness of one of her stars or planets near the horizon.

He shot her a look. "I don't find it any of those things. It's _not_ special, it's _not_ awe-inspiring. Not to me."

"If that was true, you wouldn't spend so much of your free time in here while I rehearse the shows."

"It's the only way I can see these things in London. How can I figure any of this out without proper observation, and how can I do that in a city with so many lights that the sky hardly exists at all?"

"Whatever you have to tell yourself, darling."

"It's not about whether or not I find this nonsense beautiful. I don't care about that. I care about why normal people adore it. I want to know why people have been dedicating poems to the subject for centuries. I just want to understand."

"Haven't you ever written about stars or planets?"

"Everyone has. It's like some terrible evolutionary compulsion. Which is why I find it so irritating. Besides, any writing I've done about the night sky isn't so much romanticizing as it is me trying to sort out why people have attached their hearts to something ultimately unfeeling."

He mentally filled in the rest of the sentence that he couldn't bring himself to say out loud: something unfeeling like me.

"I've never found space to be unfeeling, Sherlock, so I can't help you there. Perhaps consult a mathematician like your mother, something along those lines. Why, as a poet, you even expect to find an answer at all is beyond me. Poets only observe. They don't answer."

"Who does answer, then? Scientists?"

"No. Even scientists are only finding temporary explanations, a way of rationalizing a world that we in reality know very little about. There are no answers, Sherlock."

He didn't reply, but those four words echoed in his head louder than any narration in here would ever sound. There had to be answers. It was the only thing that kept him going some days, the idea that if he just tried hard enough, everything would become clear eventually. No answer was too chaotic. Too unpredictable. And in his experience, when something out of the ordinary happened, it was almost never anything good. Chaos meant death and war and crime. Since when did a state of no answers or rationality lead to anything positive? No, the universe was full of black holes, always waiting to suck you in and rip you to pieces. Stars were tamed explosions. Even the sun was dying, albeit at a rate that might as well have been nonexistent as far as humanity was concerned.

But still, he couldn't shake the feeling, the coldness of never knowing, of never having any sort of emotional or mental closure about this or any of the conundrums that had puzzled him over the years.

Over the last week, he had read quite a lot of John Watson's work. He kept coming back to _The Silent Child_ , which still stood out among all the others as something different. Not glaringly so, mind you, but there was definitely something that wasn't in the other various crime novels. He'd hoped that the books would give him some clues about their creator, but reading between the lines had never been his strong suit. Fiction was manipulative that way.

But there was a moment in _The Silent Child_ that had stuck with him for days. Kristin, the girl on the cover, the closest the book had to a protagonist, spent her entire life locked in a single room, with virtually no contact with people at all. She would get food quite literally shoved down her throat now and then. She remained tied down to a chair most of the time. Her abusive father never spoke to her, never held her, never treated her like a human being. The result was a child who grew up without language. The child had no sense of words, not able to speak or read or write, not able to do anything except _exist_. Somehow, John Watson had made her compelling despite her collection of serious limitations. And the stars even found this book.

The room had one window, one small window high up on the wall. In a world where she was tied down all the time and had no toys or stimuli to speak of, the girl was frequently drawn to that tiny window. And one night when she was perhaps six years old, she craned her neck out into an uncomfortable position to look out the top of the window. Being outside a large city, she could see the night sky, a small slice of it, through that pane of glass. And in the book, the first time the girl decides to look out, the first time she lays eyes on the stars, is also the first time she smiles, even though no one is there to see it.

As Sherlock left the planetarium, stepping out into the high contrast hell of the London night, he turned his head to the sky. In between the city lights, he could see one or two stubborn stars fighting their way through.

Kristin would have smiled. Sherlock didn't know what to do. And he hated it.

He had a paperback copy of the book in his coat pocket even then, and flipped through it absently in the cab home. It was more convenient than lugging around the hardback, but he hated the front cover of this copy. It was of an empty room with beige walls. Even looking at it made him feel claustrophobic.

Maybe the obsession with the night was just another of the supposedly universal human experiences that he didn't understand – and likely never would. It was honestly the least troubling answer. But now and then it would be nice, to understand the things everyone else did. The things he understood the general public didn't care about. No one wants to chat about iambic tetrameter or idioms in ancient Greek over dinner. They want to talk about their husbands and wives and children and what television show they're watching this week and how romantic their date was.

The taxi pulled up to the curb, and Sherlock tucked the paperback back in his pocket, reaching out a gloved hand to open the car door. Baker Street was already growing still around them, a domestic silence leaving little outside except pools of light from street lamps and the occasional sound of tires on asphalt.

As he emerged from the blackness of the cab, he saw the man standing at his door – clearly just arrived and knocked, getting no reply. When Sherlock slammed the car door shut, the sharp sound drew the man's attention, and when he turned around on the small front step, Sherlock couldn't believe he hadn't recognized him even from his back and shoulders.

But it couldn't possibly be real, could it? Not with the points of light from windows and passing cars, not with the only slightly nippy air on his face, not with the surreal stillness that came with standing in the wake of activity and life. People didn't turn around on your front steps and light up, apparently pleased to see you, certainly not in his experience. People's faces were supposed to be hardened by shadows, not made softer, and Sherlock couldn't help but feel like this was what it was like seeing John Watson for the first time. Not the author, with the tense smile and crafted polite answers. Life imitates poetry, he thought. And surely this surreality must exist with reason.

For a split second, John's face changed, and Sherlock worried that the light had played tricks on his eyes, that the man was still just as irritated with him as he had been the night they met. But he recognized the gesture, the hand rubbing the back of his neck, the quick glance down at the pavement, that almost guilty expression that Sherlock was sure he had on his own face as well. He could feel the book in his pocket, almost on fire. Could John read his face, too, despite his efforts to appear neutral?

The silence stretched on between them, pointed but not unpleasant. Sherlock heard the sound of the cab pulling away, the tires crunching on the ground. Had it only been seconds? It had seemed so much longer.

He could have said anything, something poetic and meaningful, something apologetic. But instead, he grinned, and said, "Come to tell me who Harry is?"

Sherlock expected the shadows to change again and grow darker on his face, but instead he laughed, glancing down the street. And it was only then that Sherlock saw what he'd been holding so gingerly in his hand.

"No. Come to return your book."

* * *

He shouldn't have felt nervous having someone else in his home. He'd had many people over during his years at Baker Street, but this time, he saw all the flaws in it: the stack of newspapers in the corner, the fading places on the upholstery, the complete disaster that was the kitchen. But when he glanced back to see John's reaction, he found that John either did not notice these grievous errors or that he somehow embraced them.

Sherlock took the book from his outstretched hand, despite the fact that it hardly felt like his now that it had been away from him. He set it down vaguely in its alphabetical position on the shelf with what he hoped was an air of nonchalance. But once it left his hand, he had no idea what to do, and his fingers lingered on it for a moment, his eyes running over the other familiar titles while he tried to stall.

"Who did you get it for?" John asked from behind him. Sherlock turned to find John glancing around the room, taking in even the strangest aspects of his décor with cool detachment. At least one of them was succeeding at nonchalance.

"Sorry?"

John met his eyes, standing beside the extra easy chair. "I figured it was a gift. The book, I mean."

"Why is that?"

"You didn't strike me as the poetry type."

"On the contrary, it's one of the only redeemable mediums left." He tugged off his gloves, setting them to the side. It was impossible to look at John, and out of habit he let his eyes fall to the floor. It was always more difficult to maintain composure and eye contact at the same time; he settled for composure. He slid out of his coat and crossed the room to hang it up before slinking over to his usual chair to sit. By the time he was safe against the gray leather, John had moved to the bookcase and was reviewing the other titles.

"There's a lot of this Auden guy. Any reason in particular?"

"I like him."

John laughed a little to himself without taking his eyes off the books. "You know, for someone who enjoys asking invasive questions, you're especially cagey about answering even simple ones."

"No sense in wasting valuable time explaining poetry to someone who clearly doesn't read it."

"What makes you think I don't read it?"

"Well, do you?"

"Technically I do, now."

"You were reading the Auden, then?"

"Yeah."

Sherlock ran his hand over the arm rest of his chair, despising having nothing else to fidget with. "Then you tell me."

"Tell you what?"

"Why Auden?"

"I don't know you well enough to tell you something about yourself like that, I don't think."

"I know. So tell me why _you_ were reading it."

John glanced over his shoulder at him. "I was trying to figure out who the hell you were."

"Any success?"

"Not really."

Sherlock smiled. "And I'm positive you continued to read it even long after giving up hope of using it as a Rosetta stone. What caught your attention?"

John let out a somewhat frustrated sigh and shrugged as he crossed the room to take a seat in the second chair. "He sounded...desperate."

"For what?"

"I don't know. There was just – there was a thing in one of the poems about a crooked heart and it sort of ate at me."

Sherlock let the sentence hang in the air, making an active effort to not give himself away in his expression. "I know that poem all too well. And perhaps desperate is an accurate assessment. Auden had his fair share of things to agonize over. If you were going to have a brutal introduction into poetry, you could have done far worse. At least you didn't just start with Shakespeare sonnets like everyone else does."

"Did you start with those?"

"God, no. I started with Byron."

"Of course you did. So what are you? A literature professor?"

"No."

"Then what?"

"Whatever I need to be on any given day."

"You really are a cagey bastard."

Sherlock smiled. "I have a question for the author."

"I'm not talking about Harry."

"Oh, I didn't think you would. Not yet, anyway."

"If I answer whatever question you have, do I get to ask you one?"

Sherlock didn't answer. "Why does _The Silent Child_ seem tonally different from all your other work? Why was it published during the off season with little publicity and marketing? Why does it seem to me that that is the only book you're thinking about while you answer questions about your newest release? Why was there such a massive time gap on either side of that particular novel?"

"That's more than one question."

"How about this one then: why is your about the author page so noticeably brief?"

John crossed his arms over his chest, an automatic defense. "Believe it or not, but I'm really not very interesting. No need for a lengthy about the author page. There's nothing to say."

"Oh I highly doubt that. You've managed to keep my attention for several days, which is far more than most people manage. So there must be at least a handful of things to say."

"I've held your attention?"

"Yes. And I held yours."

"What makes you so sure?"

"Well, here you are."

* * *

An Italian restaurant, late at night and still with its tiny candles and windowseats. Sherlock sat with a plate of untouched food across from John. There had been a moment where the restaurant owner recognized the new guest, and he paused to say what a fan he was, and Sherlock had only held his breath praying that he wouldn't bring up that Sherlock was a writer, too.

"How does an army doctor become a novelist?"

John set down the glass of wine. "How does anyone become anything?"

"I ask because publishing tends to be an echo chamber of familiar names."

"How would you know?"

"My brother works as an executive at a publishing house, so I'm quite familiar with your universe. It's rare that someone from the outside world breaks through. Usually it's populated by people who have always been in the business, not a lot of new faces."

"Christ, there's another of you?"

"I assure you I'm nothing like him. He's an excellent businessman, excellent executive figure, but has terrible taste in books."

John laughed. "Isn't he in the wrong business, then?"

"Not necessarily. Most of the general public has terrible tastes in books."

"I ended up a novelist by accident, honestly. I had never planned on doing anything serious with my writing. It was just something to do. When I came back from Afghanistan I realized I didn't really know what to say to anyone, so I just started keeping to myself and writing my own conversations."

"The classic antisocial writer trope."

John nodded his head, conceding. "Yeah, well, writer or not, you don't seem any more fond of people than me. And sometimes I wish I'd never published anything. It sort of became work instead of fun. Well, instead of a comforting coping mechanism. But someone suggested I send in the manuscript of _Boscombe Valley_ , which led to me meeting my agent, which led to years and years of sending out books. Most of them lost their heart, though."

"Not _The Silent Child_."

"No, not that one. But most of them are appropriately detached."

Sherlock rested his chin on his folded hands, examining John in the muted warmth of the restaurant lights. There were no shadows that looked bad on him. "Who initially talked you into sending in that first manuscript?" John made eye contact with him, only for a few seconds, before glancing out the window into the street, a confession without words. "Harry did, didn't he? Then why no dedication till _The Silent Child_?"

John set down his fork, pasta still hanging from it, and sighed. "Did you just look up all the dedications in all my books?"

"Perhaps. I saw ones to your agent Ella Christian, a James Sholto, Mike Stamford. I can't help but notice that the only person missing a last name in the dedications is Harry."

"How much reading up have you been doing exactly?"

"Not much, given that you seem to hardly exist despite being so visible. I've learned more from these conversations tonight than in all my efforts to find information online."

"And how would you feel if I gave you the third degree?"

"I would ignore your questions and move on."

"And who would you dedicate a book to?"

"I wouldn't." It wasn't a lie. _Sic Transit_ had no such dedication. Sherlock had always considered it a book he wrote solely for himself that somehow became noteworthy without his consent. People had asked him countless times who inspired some of the poems in it, that surely at the root of every writer's work there had to be _someone_ , someone who existed only to give the reader some sort of emotional closure. Mycroft said dedications humanized writers, made them feel more accessible to the public. But Sherlock had never liked that philosophy. And he had never liked being accessible. "They tend to lack sincerity or exist only for factual purposes. For instance, Ella getting a dedication since she was the reason the book was published in the first place. You can quantify her worth. Or the people who dedicate things to their parents out of some sense of familial obligation."

"Don't poets write entire collections of poetry as a dedication to someone? Like the Brownings? Aren't they the ones who wrote all those sonnets to each other?"

"Oh god, let's not bring the Brownings into this. I lost patience with them ages ago. But no, writing poetry for someone isn't a dedication. It's a romantic devotional."

"Are you sure you're not a literature professor?"

"Absolutely positive."

John shook his head, laughing to himself, and Sherlock made every effort to remain as still as possible. "When are you going to actually tell me anything about yourself instead of all this dramatic secretive nonsense?" John smiled at him, and though the words made Sherlock expect irritation, instead he found something else, something akin to the expression he had had when he showed up on Sherlock's doorstep. The candlelight, the faint music playing over the speakers, the way John was looking at him, it was all too much. He had crossed a line into vulnerable territory without meaning to.

Sherlock's first line coping mechanism had always been sarcasm, the equivalent of a magician using misdirection to hide the doves. So all he said, albeit with hesitation, was, "When you tell me who Harry is?" He hated that he didn't sound sure. The offhanded remarks always worked best when delivered with total certainty, but he didn't want to be offhanded to the point that he drove this man away in a rage. But clearly John Watson, while a constantly annoyed person professionally, clearly wasn't that way personally.

Walking back to Baker Street, Sherlock realized it was the first time in ages that he had genuinely enjoyed anyone's company. Even with the banter, even with his tendency to keep people at arm's length, and even though they were both clearly still keeping things from each other, it was heaven not walking alone.

"That's going to become our running joke, isn't it? The thing about Harry," John said in his deadpan manner.

Sherlock stared down at the pavement beneath his feet as they crossed the street. "Running jokes require multiple encounters."

"Obviously." They came to a stop in front of Baker Street, where their night had begun. "What? You thought that we'd have this one night and never speak to each other again? I don't find that very likely, do you?"

"I've heard of stranger things. In fact, writers have often immortalized single encounters as something mystical. One event having the significance of many." Even as he said it, he could hear how unconvincing he sounded, clearly wanting to be wrong. Could John hear it too? The expression on his face made him wonder. But he knew one thing: if a single event ever more deserved to be immortalized, it was this one. People go on and on about first sights. The reality is that it's the second meeting, the third, the fourth, whichever one turns lamplight into starlight, that actually matters.

John said nothing, just continued watching him with that faintly amused smile, a Mexican standoff of human interaction. Somehow, it appeared that he knew the next step while Sherlock didn't.

After what felt like an eternity, John reached into his pockets, fishing around for a scrap of paper and a pen, the two things a writer was never without. He scribbled something down and tucked the pen behind his ear as he closed the distance of the few feet between them. Seemingly without nervousness, John reached out for Sherlock's hand and put the piece of paper in it with no additional explanation, folding his fingers over it. Sherlock opened it and saw a line of numerical text. A phone number.

Thankfully it didn't matter that Sherlock didn't know what to say; John did. But then, novelists know more about dialogue than poets.

In a voice softer than the shadows outside Baker Street, softer than the music at the restaurant, softer than the worn binding of the returned book of Auden, John said to him:

"For when you decide to tell me who Sherlock Holmes is."


	3. So That You Will Hear Me

"If you put me in a room with a gun that held only one bullet, and I was given the option to kill either Browning's 43rd sonnet or Shakespeare's 18th, the thought of having to let even one of them live would likely result in me just turning the gun on myself."

John glanced at the new text message, darting his eyes around the bookstore as if the patrons could somehow read it too. He had a reading due in mere minutes, and though he already had a tendency to stall, he found the desire to do so even stronger with the appearance of this. It was from a number not already programmed into his phone, but was there really any doubt as to who it was on the other end of the line?

 _Add new contact: Sherlock Holmes._

He sent back: "You realize I don't know either of those poems, right?"

"Of course you do. It's the _how do I love thee, let me count the ways_ nonsense and the equally grating _shall I compare thee to a summer's day_ , respectively. They teach them in every literature class in the English speaking world."

"Your timing is killing me, Sherlock."

"Why do you say that?"

"I'm at the Laurelwood shop for a reading and signing, and instead of preparing myself for it I'm becoming an accomplice in your literary homicides."

"Well, you _are_ primarily a crime writer."

John smiled at the few lines of text. The start of something, minus the frankly unnecessary preambles. No tentative approaches, no casual chit chat, no meaningless empty words.

And how the hell was he supposed to sit around and answer questions and sign books when he could be somewhere else, somewhere with candlelight and vacant pavement? The black and white of text messages wasn't enough, though he found himself surprised that he wanted more than that at all.

He could see Ella in his peripheral vision, making the universal gesture of tapping on the face of her watch. She didn't come to all the signings, but perhaps his odd moods of late provoked her to be present more often, under the pretense of wanting to be _involved_. Why did she have to pick this one?

"So pick an alternative sonnet for them to obsess over in these classes, then," John typed out, doing what he could to ignore the rest of the universe. But he knew his time was up. He belonged to the public for a few hours.

But Sherlock replied far faster than John had anticipated, which resulted in John reading the alternative sonnet immediately before he heard himself being introduced, and the soft respectful bookstore applause.

 _I do not love you as if you were salt-rose or topaz,  
or the arrow of carnations the fire shoots off.  
I love you as certain dark things are to be loved,  
in secret, between the shadow and the soul._ _I love you as the plant that never blooms  
but carries in itself the light of hidden flowers;  
thanks to your love, a certain solid fragrance,  
risen from the earth, lives darkly in my body._ _I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where.  
I love you straightforwardly, without complexities or pride;  
so I love you because I know no other way_ _than this: where I do not exist, nor you,  
so close that your hand on my chest is my hand,  
so close that you close your eyes as I fall asleep._

How was he supposed to answer questions, to play the part of the author, when all he could think about was this? It was as if he didn't have to commit it to memory; some animal part of him had already absorbed it into his body in its entirety, and all that mattered was the third stanza of this unknown poem. To hell with questions about _Gloria_. To hell with people asking about his methods of constructing a novel. To hell with the people asking him to compare and contrast _Gloria_ and _Boscombe Valley_ for the hundredth time. To hell with the questions about his next project, which he could never tell them didn't exist at all. Not yet.

It was something he had avoided skillfully, these questions about what he was working on now that _Gloria_ was on shelves. How do you break the hearts of the people in the room by saying, "There's nothing, and might never be again." He didn't want to frighten them. Especially given that he doubted this writer's block was permanent. In all likelihood, he would find another story soon enough. But for the time being, the very idea of trying to write another book sounded agonizing. As far as he was concerned, his last book was _The Silent Child_. He didn't know who had written _Gloria_. Some past-John who didn't exist anymore.

But he dodged the question yet again, in several of its forms. Maybe one day soon he would have a different answer for them.

There were times that he zoned out completely while an audience member was talking, and he had to ask them to repeat the question. He could see Ella off to the side watching him like he had lost his mind, and John knew that there would be another conversation about his mental well being within the coming weeks. But he couldn't make himself care. Instead he kept trying to stealthily keep an eye on his phone sitting on the podium in front of him. At one point, it buzzed, and in between questions, he quickly pulled up the message. There, underneath the sonnet, it said, "It's Neruda, by the way."

He heard someone clear their throat, knowing it was Ella as his eyes guiltily turned away from the phone's screen.

The fact was that he would have given anything to be out of this shop, back in Baker Street with the madman. Field more questions, or listen to him bitch about the Brownings for hours? No contest. He didn't even care if he never found out any details about Sherlock Holmes, if all he could ever have was his mysterious bullshit, it would be enough, because even that was so much more than he had ever gotten from anyone else.

The Neruda sonnet ran on loop in his brain to the point of obsession. He somehow answered another half hour of questions while thinking only about the third stanza. Was this what living felt like? He was approaching a manic energy he hadn't felt in years, an inexplicable high. Could the audience members tell, like Ella surely could? Did it matter if they could?

It didn't.

After being told who the poet was, John had hated how silent his phone had been. No additional messages or information. _Please, rant to me about Shakespeare again, please break up this monotony, please drag me down with you_.

And then he heard a voice say:

"I'm curious about one of the lines. 'It was a bond of union when I found that he was as friendless as I.' Surely there's a story there, yes? Who inspired that line of thinking? Who was the real life equivalent that surely elicited such a reaction? Was that your own experience in academia?"

Initially he thought his ears were playing tricks on him, somehow modulating someone else's voice, turning it into the voice he wanted to hear. But no, there he was, standing in the back behind all the seated audience members, the same cocky smile on his face that had so infuriated John the night they met.

Of course he would have fixated on that line. Of course he would.

He wanted the crowd to part like the Red Sea. Wanted to eliminate anything standing between them. Wanted to say _yes, yes I was alone and friendless like you, yes I'm exhausted, yes I just want some sort of union of understanding, a thousand times, yes._

Were the other people present even remotely aware of what they were watching? Did they know they were seeing a silent conversation that went beyond this shop, this book, their questions?

Finally, all he could do was smile, and say, "I'm afraid we're all out of time for questions."

Ella glared at him but was powerless to stop the progression from the Q&A session into the signing. He only prayed it would go quickly. Even as the other patrons began to line up in front of the table next to the podium, John could see him through the crowd, smiling at him with a surprising tenderness that he hadn't anticipated. And as the first person held out their copy of the book to him, he saw Sherlock Holmes cross the room and make a place at a table in the shop's cafe, waiting patiently.

Waiting for him.

* * *

What was this, to an outside observer?

Sherlock sat at the small cafe table, glancing between his phone and John, eyes always lingering on the latter. Human beings in general were horribly unobservant, but surely one or two noticed that he wasn't just another face in the crowd to this man. Did they wonder how they knew each other? What it meant that John would stop a Q&A because he spoke? Now and then, he would see someone in the line look at him, half-distracted by a friend, clearly wondering, but given how easy it was to distract ordinary people, it never lasted long. He was unimportant to everyone in this store, but one.

Admittedly, it probably was a bit damning that as soon as the signing was done, John came immediately to him, to the cups of coffee Sherlock had bought them, to this oddly liminal cafe table.

"I never told you how I took my coffee," he said, sitting down across from him.

"You didn't have to."

John took a sip of the drink and laughed. "Spot on."

"I know."

Sherlock would have killed for a mirror. Mirrors had always been one of his least favorite things, as they showed him the only thing he didn't want to see: himself. But tonight he wanted one, just so he could adjust his own facial expression accordingly, just to make sure that it wasn't written on his face as he felt it surely was. But then, John's face was only barley concealed starvation as well. It was easier to stare down your own desperation through someone else's face.

The author known for his affable stoicism and dry sense of humor, now just a man letting his eyes linger on someone else's hands, eyes, lips.

Sherlock mentally chastised himself. Poets tended to romanticize innocuous details. He refused to fall victim to that, given the thousands of times he had done so only to discover that he was seeing roses when there wasn't even a garden.

He probably shouldn't have come at all, but the shop was so close to home, and he was so tired of the silence in Baker Street. Theatrics aside, this wasn't how normal people did things. Normal people were dinner and a movie, ad nauseam, so it wasn't as if he genuinely wanted to be like them, but he was acutely aware that there was no rule book of social cues for _this_.

Before he left the womb of his living room, Sherlock had started a poem that as of yet he had not thrown into the fire. For the first time in years, a bit of verse had survived. So of course he had to come here. Maybe it would lead to another stanza.

Part of him was waiting for the line he was sure John would speak, something to the effect of, "Going to tell me who Sherlock Holmes is now?" And he couldn't. He dreaded the questions because he had no answer, no justification for why he had started this the way he had. But he couldn't delay such an encounter any longer, let alone however long it might take for him to explain himself to another human being. He'd tried to do that with _Sic Transit_ , and, well, look how that had gone.

So if this performance could speak for him, he prayed it would. There was no way to verbally convey desperation. No way to explain who Sherlock Holmes was.

Blessedly, John didn't follow the script Sherlock had created for him in his head. Instead he said, "Are you going to crash all my signings?"

"That depends. Do you want me to?" He leaned his arms on the table, expecting banter even though he hadn't said it as a joke. Initially, he meant to. But it didn't come out that way in the end.

John reached out and wrapped his hands around his cup, staring at the white top, and Sherlock saw the change. The shift from Bestselling Author Dr. John Watson, of Somerset, Who Lives and Works in London, to John, the man who returned old books of poetry and wrote about broken children and who looked at him with a seemingly infinite kindness.

Sherlock waited as John appeared to process the question, to give a truly thoughtful answer to it, not a young child nervous about giving the teacher a wrong answer, but the graduate nervous about defending a thesis. But John stayed silent, though he did look up to face him. When he finally opened his mouth to speak, Sherlock leaned forward a few inches, expecting the answer to be a whisper. But before John could get a word out, another table intervened.

"Listen, love poetry will always be the most painful, that's just human nature."

"There is poetry literally written about genocide and hate crimes and you're telling me that love poetry is the painful genre? Are you serious?"

To their right was a table of twenty-somethings, likely university kids who already considered themselves literary scholars. Sherlock caught the sudden furrow to John's brow, irritated by the unwitting interruption. They listened in on the conversation as the students threw lines back and forth at each other out of what was presumably some sort of intellectual masochism. Drawn to painful poetry. Sherlock couldn't blame them. That sort of poetry had the ability to sublimate the human heart's darkest corners and wrap it up in a handful of lines. Even if you weren't a soldier, a victim of a crime, you had surely been affected by love, one way or another, whether you wanted to be or not. The universal language of people in pain.

John didn't recognize the lines the students began to throw around, of course. But Sherlock did. Their contest with each other to prove to everyone that _they_ could identify pain better than their peers. One student's contribution was, " _I can write the saddest lines tonight/I loved her/and sometimes, she loved me too_."

As an aside, Sherlock said, "An appearance by our good friend Neruda. You can always count on Neruda to twist the knife." He took a long drink of his coffee, avoiding John's eyes before he turned back to the students, watching them as subtly as one could. As each student gave their recitations, Sherlock continued to cite their sources to John under his breath.

" _And all I loved, I loved alone_."

"Poe."

" _Here is the repeated image of the lover destroyed_."

"Siken," Sherlock said quietly. "I'm surprised they're familiar with any modern ones."

" _How shall I greet thee?/With silence and tears_."

"Byron, of course."

" _Down, down, down into the darkness of the grave/Gently they go, the beautiful, the tender, the kind_."

"Edna St. Vincent Millay."

" _How frail the human heart must be_."

"Plath. And she should know."

" _He would not stay for me, and who can wonder?_ " A pause, the result of knowing the context for certain poet's works. "A.E. Housman." Sherlock knew far too much about Housman to be removed, and he hoped John didn't see the changes in his face upon hearing that line.

" _Tears and loss and broken dreams/may find your heart at dusk_."

"Carl Sandburg."

" _What's the worst thing you can do to your very best friends?/Tell them your darkest secret./and isn't that always love?_ "

Sherlock froze with his cup halfway to his mouth, eyes tracking for which student had spoken. It was a reserved young man who had not yet contributed to the conversation, but as he did, he instinctively looked to a specific member of the group. The one observed was unaware. Weren't they always?

John watched Sherlock expectantly, waiting for him to name the poet. Sherlock cursed the boy for speaking – even though a certain amount of him sympathized – but there was no way he could tell John the author. No way he could literarily out himself like that.

He took a sip of the coffee, and said without any visible reaction – as far as he could tell given the lack of mirrors, "I'm not familiar with that one."

"It's sad."

"I try to avoid a certain kind of sorrowful poetry."

"I figured you'd be all over it, given how cynical you are."

"Unless it's sad romantically I want nothing to do with it. The world has its own wars and deaths and cruelties. I'll stick to a more gentle sorrow. Love poems can always guarantee you that."

John smiled, a little sadly, and said, "Sometimes the things you say sound like something out of a poem. Regular people don't talk like that."

"I've never been considered a regular person. I'm quite serious, though. Why would I want to read grand epic poems about death and sacrifice for my sadness when I could read poems like the sonnet I sent you earlier tonight? Beautiful enough to make you feel the ache in your chest. Though it isn't even my favorite of Neruda's."

"Which one is?" John asked before draining the remaining coffee from his cup.

Sherlock stood and walked away, somehow knowing John would follow. He made his way through the shelves like it was pure muscle memory, passing by general fiction, self-help, humor, all the familiar signposts, weaving between various patrons. Poetry was in a back corner, an aisle partially hidden from the rest of the shop. It was one of Sherlock's favorite things about this particular store. Even though he could hear the other shoppers, the background noises of keys rattling in someone's purse, the whispered conversations, he felt isolated here, invisible.

He scanned the familiar shelves and pulled out a book, _Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair_. He'd had his own copy since he was fourteen.

Holding out the book to John without even checking the table of contents, he said, "The fifth one, page fifteen."

John gave him one last brief look of confusion, but took the book carefully from his hands and flipped to the correct page. Sherlock watched him read it, slowly, carefully, his eyes running over the paper in such a quiet gentle manner, clearly lingering on certain lines and looking at the text the way people look at each other when they wake up in bed together.

It was called "So That You Will Hear Me." It wasn't one of the more popular Neruda poems, but he had always felt oddly drawn to it, and so it made this bookstore corner feel like a confessional.

 _Love me, companion. Don't forsake me. Follow Me.  
Follow me, companion, on this wave of anguish._ _But my words become stained with your love.  
You occupy everything, you occupy everything._

Stupid, to be in this deep so quickly, with so little restraint or common sense, to be mentally begging, over and over, _hear me, please hear me, hear what I can't yet say_. Why they had been pulled together, Sherlock didn't know, but he couldn't shake the feeling that this, all of _this_ , mattered more than anything else in his life had. But surely John wasn't thinking the same thing. There was some type of interest there, yes, but Sherlock imagined it was the same style of interest that people reserved for medical curiosities and sideshows. A bizarre puzzle in a coat and scarf, and gloved hands holding out tiny love stories. John Watson was a rational man, surely as thorough and calculating as his books were.

So often seen as a mysterious person in his section of the literati, Sherlock felt awfully small.

He waited, trying to look around so it felt less like staring, turning his eyes to the shelves he could see, the carpet beneath his feet, the end of the aisle that remained empty. But still he saw the details, as always. John's fingers running over Sherlock's favorite lines, how he was so still that even his breathing seemed like a rush of movement, how his face looked nothing like it did when he was confronted by fans or his agent or the press.

And even though he was looking away when it happened, he could feel the second John finally looked up from the book, staring at him in silence. Sherlock let his line of sight dart around even though John's never faltered. He wasn't invisible here this time, no. He was transparent.

Sherlock saw John's head turn in his periphery and believed that he was finally avoiding eye contact as well, but instead he was just looking around the two of them, scanning for any people potentially passing by the aisle. But there were none.

So the kiss shouldn't have come as such a surprise. But these things always did come as surprises to Sherlock. He found his back against the bookcase, one of John's hands on his neck, the other still holding the book, his arm resting on Sherlock's shoulder.

Sherlock knew what loving someone felt like; that was never the issue. It came up more than once in _Sic Transit_. But what he was finally understanding, premature as it may have been, was what _being loved_ felt like. Was this what all those other poets felt?

He didn't care. In these brief moments, it was to hell with the poets, to hell with the stars.

Not quite entirely parted, forehead to forehead, he heard John laugh under his breath and say, "We really need to go out again, have dinner again or something, we really do."

"Yes, of course." He could barely get the words out at all.

John finally backed up, that one step feeling like miles, and for a moment Sherlock couldn't help but wonder if this was all some sort of cruel joke. He waited to be the punchline again. Things that appear too good to be true usually are. But John just smiled and said, "I'm serious, I really am. And it's not like I don't have your number."

Sherlock couldn't help but laugh, even if only in relief. Maybe this whole thing wasn't a big mistake, wasn't something that would come back to haunt him like all those poems had over the years. Maybe he wasn't someone's curiosity or punchline anymore.

"Well, it's a better alternative to me showing up unannounced at all your readings." John stood there, finger still holding the place in the book, and no, this wasn't another case of Sherlock not picking up on social clues, John genuinely did appear as if he wanted to close that distance again.

"John?" Their heads snapped in the direction of the voice. It was the agent, having just appeared on the scene, blessedly a few minutes later than she could have. "You weren't answering your phone."

"No, Ella, sorry, I got kind of caught up talking to..." He clearly was searching for a word to describe _this_ , but was failing miserably. "Never mind. What's going on?"

"I need to go over a few schedules with you before we go home for the night. I'll be out of my office the rest of the week, so if you have a moment." She glanced between the two of them, waiting to see if the man unknown to her would dare to speak. Instead Sherlock only held his hand out to John for the book, John's finger sliding out from its place as he gave it back.

The agent said something to John, asked him a question, but Sherlock didn't hear it. He doubted that even John did, given that as he walked down the aisle toward her, he kept looking back, an easily distracted child making things harder on the teacher. Sherlock held tight to the book, wondering what certain things felt like without the protective cover of gloves.

Before being lost to the other shelves and other shoppers, John stopped. Interrupting his agent mid-question, he turned and said, "Sherlock? I hear you."

Sherlock stayed there a minute, leaning against the shelves, enjoying the momentary silence in his head. What had the agent thought of that remark? Was she clueless, preoccupied with her own work? Or was it so glaringly obvious to her that she was likely giving John hell for it right now? Either way, he enjoyed this, this feeling of not being Sherlock Holmes the Recluse Poet, and instead just being Sherlock Holmes. Strip away all the awards, all the accolades, all the heckling regarding his professional future, and this was what was left. And it seemed almost inviting.

After a few minutes – or had it been half an hour already? – Sherlock's phone chimed with an incoming text message. Replacing the Neruda to its rightful place, he pulled out his phone to read it.

"I hear you loud and clear."


	4. The More Loving One

Sherlock felt his phone buzz in his hand. A single line: "Dinner tonight?"

He smiled almost on reflex and said, "Yes."

"Since when do you answer your phone?" Professor Cairns asked from her podium to Sherlock's left. "I've watched you ignore calls from your parents, your brother, several literary agents. Did you make a New Year's resolution that you didn't tell me about?"

The lights above him began to reverse. He had watched them grow and shrink for hours. And he refused to answer her questions. "What's the new show about?"

"Supernovas," she said, without pressing further. She knew she had made her mark.

"Hmm."

"Do you have a problem with supernovas?"

"They're so _dramatic_ ," he said with obvious distaste, turning his phone in circles in his hands.

"Rich coming from you, Sherlock." He tilted his head to look at her, and could just see the smirk on her face in the shifting darkness. "Do you hate them as much as you hate romance novels?"

He turned away from her and watched the star above him, recently exploded, slowly collapse on itself, coming back together again, becoming whole. What was the point if Cairns was just going to make it burst again? "I hate many things. Why ask about romance novels?"

"Because from what I hear from your mother, you're beginning to live one. Or rather, from what your mother heard from your brother."

Sherlock rolled his eyes and sat up straight, the slanted back of the planetarium chair disappearing from behind him. "Mycroft isn't know for his accurate assessments of human emotion, or even the most trite of plot arcs for that matter."

" _I have this terrible feeling, from time to time,/that we all might just be human./Even me./Even you._ "

"Why does everybody always quote _that_ one. No one pays enough attention to get the point at all. You're all so busy quoting the sentimental stanzas that you ignore the thesis of the final lines." Sherlock slipped his phone into his pocket and rested his arms on his knees, head in hands rubbing at eyes tired from staring at a blank white screen most of the night before. The mental fatigue had been brutal this week. He could have sworn he was on the verge of something, so close to breaking through, but it had turned out that the ice was miles deep instead of inches.

"All poets are guilty of creating truisms out of context, just like astronomers will always be guilty of colorizing events that in space have no significant color. It's all flair for the general public."

"And it's still a low blow to use my own out of context truisms against me."

"Well darling, if I don't, who will?" He knew she was smiling, could hear it in her voice without looking up from the indiscriminate blackness of the planetarium floor. It looked like an appealing abyss at the moment. Sherlock's own personal hell had always been people talking to him about his work, referencing it or asking questions about it. He'd had to be strong-armed to do any interviews when _Sic Transit_ was first released, and he still made a point of actively avoiding all conferences or conventions, anywhere that people who know his work might gather. They always wanted to know what the poems _meant_ , like the answer was a secret they could unlock by playing an invasive game of twenty questions with the author. But the reality was that even Sherlock himself didn't know what some of them meant. They were all just impressions, like paintings of water lilies. Poetry couldn't be explained in the way the general public wanted. It could only be felt. But no one ever listened when he said as much. No, all they wanted to know is whether or not a person in one poem was someone real in his life, if the darker ones represented his own darkness, if one with Mediterranean imagery was reminiscent of some lost weekend. Poems just being impressions of love or pain wasn't enough for them.

"The entirety of the literary world," he said quietly, more to himself than to her. The dark planetarium floor's carpet seemed more relevant than the supernovas. It was still, and silent, and empty. He had to force his eyes away from it. He stood to leave, but paused next to Cairns' podium, looking up at the simulated supernova on the ceiling, an artist's reconstruction in icy blue. "So what is that?"

"SN-2008D. It was the first explosion of its kind to be witnessed in real time by people on earth."

Sherlock stared as the blue orb slowly grew and burst, in slow-motion, without the addition of the audio track, and suddenly the planetarium felt cold.

"That I _can_ relate to," he said, and left without another word.

* * *

"You okay?" John asked from the other side of the table in what the owner of the restaurant had dubbed _their_ booth. It was tucked in against the wall and front windows, and on especially chilly nights one could feel the air slip in from around the panes of glass. But somehow, it still always felt warm there, even though the single candles on each table could provide no real warmth. And all Sherlock could think about was the fact that space appeared so cold despite it being filled with balls of fire.

"Yes. I'm fine."

"You haven't touched your food."

"Not hungry," he said, leaning his head on his hand.

John smiled. "Why would you want to have dinner if you weren't hungry?"  
"With anyone else, I wouldn't," he answered, immediately regretting the slip of honesty. John never seemed to mind those honest moments, but Sherlock did. They were all risks.

People were often described as being like drugs, but knowing John Watson made the comparison even more confusing to him than it already was. Drugs led to addiction, addiction led to pain, pain led to resentment, and on and on and on. But how else could people convey the sense of _need_ , without comparing it to a fix? It wasn't enough anymore, being around anyone else. Something about this man, about how steadfast he appeared, how much more complex he was than the general public believed, some sort of down-to-earth charm that he carried with him in his very bones.

"I'm just frustrated with work, that's all," Sherlock said.

"Since when do you work? I always figured you were one of the old money types that didn't have to have a job unless they wanted to."

"There's work beyond the general population. There's a difference between a job and work. You're correct, I don't _need_ a job unless I want one. But I still have work. And it's infuriating."

"I won't even ask what that entails, since I know you won't tell me." Sherlock expected the phrase to be terse and passive-aggressive, but when he darted his eyes away from the street outside to look at John, he seemed completely unfazed.

The silence sat over them for a moment, heavy and warm from all the ovens back in the kitchen, the sharp contrast to the cold panes of glass. John continued to calmly work his way through his food, pausing to drink. John was more of a liquor person than a wine person, and it showed in the way he knocked back half a glass like he would a shot of whiskey. But he knew Sherlock was a wine drinker and had recently adjusted his own drink orders accordingly. They were almost needing another bottle.

"John, is there anything you feel you need to know about me?"  
John shrugged, taking a bite of his food. "No, not really. You'll tell me when you want to. It doesn't matter, so long as you're here now. The rest can wait."

"From what people tell me this level of reticence isn't generally what normal people expect from their..." What _was_ this, exactly? What to call it? There had been no discussion of labels just as there had been no discussions about Sherlock's life story.

"Spouse, boyfriend, girlfriend, whatever? No, it's not. But this isn't a normal situation is it? Besides Sherlock, I never _expect_ anything from you; I came into this with no expectations. At the end of the day, it doesn't matter, because you're still here. That's all that counts."

Sherlock didn't ask the barrage of questions running through his head. All of them came back somehow to: How does anyone genuinely like me this much? There had to be a catch. At the heart of it, Sherlock believed that this would be intense but brief. John would find someone else, or he would turn out to be a serial monogamist, Sherlock being only one small dot on his radar in the long term. He was torn between the options of letting himself enjoy this brief period, these small hours, or facing things realistically and getting out now before more damage could be done. But he didn't want out. And he didn't want to be a blip on the radar.

But there is no good or subtle way to ask someone if they'll leave you too like everyone else has. No way to beg someone to stay with you without coming off as an emotional manipulator. Instead, there were moments like this, where he could pretend it would be this way forever, that the seemingly inevitable fallout wasn't just around the corner, that somehow, miraculously, someone found his flaws endearing and decided to stay.

Instead, all he said was, "Good. Thank you."

Was it too soon to call this love? Surely for John it was. But Sherlock, who had always experienced life turned up as high as possible, who felt either nothing or everything, had no other words in his vocabulary that could express this, this feeling of having known someone your entire life but never having met.

But just as there was no good way to beg someone to stay, there was no good method for asking _is this all in my head, blown out of proportion?_

Am I enough?

Walking home to Baker Street, talking about the Genie case – a wonderfully esoteric point of commonality – Sherlock was half-distracted the entire conversation. The world was slightly blurry from the wine, and even with John so close that they brushed against each other, he was still convinced that things would change rapidly and it would all be a joke at his expense.

He felt like a poet cliché, potentially loving someone far more than the other person would ever be able to manage. And so once again, Auden and the stars were there to taunt him.

 _How should we like it were stars to burn  
_ _With a passion for us we could not return?  
_ _If equal affection cannot be,  
_ _Let the more loving one be me._

Sherlock thought of John as the steadfast one, but the reality was that Sherlock had always been that person, the one who held out, the one who stayed, the one who would bend over backwards for other people. That was the sort of behavior that led him down a path that resulted in resentment. Somewhere along the line, somewhere around when _Sic Transit_ debuted, he shut the world out. He was sick of being the one who stayed, sick of being the person used but never loved by others. Of course he had his family and his small circle of acquaintances in his life, but would any of them choose him over someone else? Unlikely. So what was John's angle? What was in it for him?

In terms of being the more loving one, at least Sherlock had had plenty of practice. This was familiar territory, miserable as it could be. Keeping people at arm's length made you sore, but it was effective.

At his front door, a place they had stood what felt like a hundred times, he always expected John to come up with a sociable way to end things, _it's not you it's me, I like you as a friend, you're just not my type_. He thought this every time without fail, even though John's rate of proving him wrong had held steady at one hundred percent. Things never ended in awkward uncomfortable silence; they always ended with embraces, with a kiss, with a promise of more small hours to come. Why he thought things would go a different way next time, he didn't know, but he was always still filled with terror until John confirmed, through words or actions, that it wasn't all a joke.

But was John aware? Or was he so certain and steadfast that he couldn't see what felt like glaring insecurity badly masked by sarcasm? Sherlock was beginning to believe that many people knew what was going on in his head, but didn't bother to tell him. Was John one of those people, too? If so, didn't he see Sherlock as rather desperate and pathetic?

For precious seconds, these thoughts would be banished by a kiss. John was always the initiator; Sherlock was too terrified himself. And it almost made it worth it, all the internal agonizing, just to have someone so close to him, having someone _want_ to be close to him.

It was too good to be true.

* * *

John disregarded the various messages he had gotten from Ella while he was out with Sherlock. He was sure she'd be livid whenever he finally reconnected, but periodically, there had to be evenings that weren't consumed with work, with deadlines and tour schedules, and offers from movie producers who would beg for film rights and then butcher the adaptation entirely. There were some nights where he just needed to be a regular person again, like he was before he ever set pen to paper.

After the signing at the bookstore, John had bought his open copy of the book of Neruda, flipping through it nearly every night. He hadn't said as much to Sherlock, didn't want to show his hand so blatantly, as he was sure Sherlock would interpret his new attachment to the book to their relationship rather than a sudden interest in poetry. He would be right. But it was true that the more of it John read, the more he liked it, and the more he felt he understood the brash and incredible man who had wandered so easily into his life.

One could always learn a great deal about a person from reading their favorite books. So what did all this poetry say about Sherlock?

Regrettably, poetry and Sherlock both often felt beyond his grasp.

But beauty, that much they had in common.

The book of Neruda was so small; even Sherlock admitted that. But he also said that even though it was small that it "contained multitudes." John was sure that description was yet another reference escaping him. But it rang true.

John's phone buzzed on the coffee table, yet again, and assuming it was Ella, he didn't even reach out to dismiss it. But it persisted, going off several times over the next few minutes. When he reached for it, it wasn't to read the texts, but to turn the phone on silent so he could more effectively ignore it. But as he held it in his hand, the screen lit up with a call instead of a text. And the moment he saw the name, he found himself consumed with a rapid and unrelenting dread.

 _Incoming call: Clara_.

* * *

Sherlock had made approximately two sentences of progress in his eternal fight with his word processor when the text message came in:

"I'm going to be out of town for a bit. Have to handle some family matters that have come up. Reschedule tomorrow for when I get back?"

And so it began, the distancing. Sherlock had prepared for this so many times he was able to remain numb. This was how it always started, he found, a casual rescheduling, a last minute cop-out. Family matters? Sherlock had hoped he would have come up with a better story.

All he said in return was, "Of course." There was no sense in him shooting the whole thing dead this early in the distancing stage. Even if this was the first of many harbingers, there was still some joy left to be had here, for however long the world allowed him to have it. That should have still brought him a certain amount of sadness. But any days he had left with John Watson were worth it.

Hell, he thought to himself, maybe the inevitable pain will make for some good writing.

But he knew damn well it wouldn't. He had used up all his pain-driven writing on _Sic Transit_. Whatever he would do in the future would have to be driven by something else.

"I'd rather be in London with you, honestly. This is going to be a miserable trip."

Sherlock stared at the message, trying to make himself believe it. It was a struggle. But he made small talk, a few pithy remarks, grateful every second that this conversation hadn't been had in person. No amount of soft lighting or chill could have made this doable. Not for him.

Always the more loving one, never the more loved.

It was fatalistic, sure, but it was still the way he felt.

Long after John had fallen asleep, Sherlock remained staring at the two sentences that now seemed to mock him with a fervor with which he had not instilled in them.

 _Perhaps these stars may shatter, may burst to pieces, dying in the night,  
_ _but no dramatic cataclysms awake one's heart, as does the tenderness of candlelight._

Perhaps the modern critics were right to condemn classical rhyme. It was certainly doing nothing beyond taunting him.

By dawn he had come to a decision: he would leave as well. London had gotten in too deep in his lungs, anyway. He was long overdue for some solitude, some semblance of peace and quiet. He would ignore any call or message from any contact, save John, of course, and would do what he had been longing to do for weeks: see the stars unimpeded by city lights. Maybe Cairns had the right idea. Maybe they could offer him some insight the rest of the world could not.

At the very least, such a sojourn would prevent him, however briefly, from feeling as if he was on the verge of being left.

The impulse trip required no planning. He had been going to the same place for the last decade of his life: an isolated chalet style hotel in the middle of the countryside, on the vacant outskirts of a town called Street. One could see the Tor in the distance from the right spot, five or so miles away, looking to be far closer than it actually was. Otherwise, the hotel was surrounded only by fields and forest and stands of wildflowers. No one, not even his meddlesome brother, knew the location of his retreat; it was something that belonged only to him.

If anywhere could offer him answers about his life, surely it would be this liminal and picturesque chalet.

Worst case scenario, the stars were always phenomenal from those fields. Worst case scenario, this exit strategy could at least act as a pause button for life, so he could have a few days to decide what to do about _Sic Transit_ , what to do about the two sentences, and most importantly, what to do about John Watson.

* * *

John sat quietly on the train, staring out the window without really seeing anything. The fact that he had no car of his own to drive had been one of his favorite excuses for not seeing his family more regularly, but this time it was unavoidable. He may have a loving but strained relationship with his mother, ambivalence toward his father, and a sense of exhausted pity for his sister, but they needed help. _Clara_ needed help. And given that Clara was the only person to have kept Harry alive for so long, he couldn't say no when she begged him to come.

They were staging an intervention, all of them. They had had to do this once or twice in the past with Harry, and it usually guaranteed them a few good years where Harry kept her shit together, but the process itself was always arduous and usually involved at least three good shouting matches. He loved his family, as much as one can, anyway, but being around them never seemed to go well. Any interactions he had with his father were especially malicious, and at family events in recent years, John had grown very talented at avoiding speaking to his father while still maintaining something like a loving relationship with the rest of them. John would never forgive him for the way he reacted when Harry had first come out as a teenager. It had stripped all the trust from their relationship, and frankly, John wondered why Harry had any fondness for their father at all after that. Perhaps it was just a case of proximity; they all lived within the same few miles they had grown up in. That life had never been enough for John.

But when Clara called for help, he answered. He knew he had a good track record for talking sense back into his sister. He wouldn't let Clara endure the rest of the Watsons alone.

He watched the countryside, all the small towns, race past him outside the window. The sun was setting, and soon the only indicator of civilization would be scattered lights in people's distant houses. John loathed the country. He spent all of his youth wanting something bigger. So when he came of age and London became attainable, he had bolted and never really looked back aside from occasional holidays and crises. As another insignificant town blinked in and out of existence out in the fields, he sighed with the realization he always had on these train trips: that his family actually knew very little about him now. They knew seventeen year old John. But how much did they know about him as an adult that couldn't also be found on a dust jacket or interview or Wikipedia page?

It had been an ideal vanishing act. But it made these returns all the more unendurable, which was why one of the conditions to his coming to the intervention was that he would not stay at any of their homes. He couldn't tolerate being under the same roof as his father for any real length of time. Staying with Clara and Harry would arouse suspicion; Harry was cynical and realistic enough to know that John wouldn't venture to his homeland without reason. So he went past their family home in Glastonbury, farther out into the countryside he so despised. So dark, so quiet, so unrelenting and still. If only the constant daylight of London and his flat could somehow be bottled and transported.

After going from train to cab, he was finally released in this quaint little hell outside what appeared to be a bed and breakfast. He had found it online, and its distance from his family was its most attractive quality. Who cared what the rooms were like, what food was available, what rating it had? It created a demilitarized zone between him and his family. That was more than enough.

It was late when he arrived, exhausted and almost irritated at the grinning face of the hotel owner behind the front desk. How could anyone be so goddamn chipper at this hour in a place remote enough that one could hear sheep from the front porch?

What he did not consider was the fact that London offered him invisibility. He was not a physically imposing man, and the sheer volume of people in London guaranteed that he could, say, safely go to the store without people coming up to him asking if he was _the_ John Watson.

But here? Here he stood out, a fact which he realized the second he saw the flash of recognition on the man's face.

"Are you John Watson? The mystery writer?" He looked thrilled by the very thought, so John made an effort, forcing his Public Smile onto his face despite the fact that he felt like blacking out for several days, maybe taking some tips from his sister.

"Yeah, regrettably," he said, and the man chuckled, thinking he was being deliberately sarcastic, rather than dead serious.

"What's got you this far off the beaten path?" The owner began to check John in, and John blindly signed the forms, slid his card across the counter, wondering if his better housing option might have been in the fields with the sheep.

"Can't reveal all the mysteries, now can I?" As always, such remarks were universally beloved by his over-eager fans. Cleverness was a low bar for most of them.

Without looking up from his ledger, said, "I must say, Dr. Watson, I'm glad to say that you're the _second_ writer under my roof at the moment."

"...And who is the first?"


	5. From Pent-Up Aching Rivers

"Oh, I doubt you'd know him, sir, he's a poet. Not many people read poetry anymore, even writers like yourself."

A second man emerged from the office behind him, dressed in a chef's clothes. He rolled his eyes endearingly at the man at the desk, saying, "But you, _you're_ a romantic, we know, we know." He gave a passing smile to John. "Sorry about him. He tends to go on about things. Have you been checked in?"

John nodded, recognized the casual intimacy of passing touch between them. Had he not been so tired, he would have found it sweet.

"I've been trying to read more poetry lately, actually," John said to the man at the desk.

"Expanding your horizons?"

"Something like that."

The man's eyes lit up with pure enthusiasm. "Well, lord knows if you need any to read, I have you covered. If you go into the living room through there, there's a slew of books of all sorts. Poetry is on the bottom shelf. Have to keep our guests entertained out here."

John was shown to his room, a quiet corner of the first floor in the back. One of the doors opened into the house itself, and one that he found inside open directly onto the porch that wrapped around the building. He could see the shadowy outlines of trees and fences beyond the porch light. But old habits die hard, and it was mere seconds before he had pulled all the curtains shut and turned on every light the room could offer. It still wasn't bright enough, the place designed to feel soft, lamplight carefully shaded, no harsh overhead panels, no bright white bulbs. Just this small room with its worn but comfortable bed, the quilts, the pair of old easy chairs in the corner, the thick rugs underneath his feet. Just like home. Or rather, just what home was _supposed_ to feel like.

He set his bag down on the chest at the foot of the bed and collapsed on top of the blankets, his phone chirping in his pocket.

"Let me know when you're in town," Clara said. John held the phone above his face, staring at the screen, the light emanating from it the harshest thing in the room. Aside from himself.

"I'm already here," he typed back. "Staying in a little place outside Street."

"Street? Christ, John, why not here _in town_?"

"You just answered your own question." He paused and then added, "How's Harry?"

"Recalcitrant. We're meeting at noon tomorrow. The intervention isn't till she gets off work the next day, but we need to catch up, need to prepare how we're going to approach this."

"This time."

She said nothing back to that. He rolled over and glanced at the analog alarm clock on the bedside table. It was eleven at night. Noon felt practically five minutes away. Five minutes until he had to see his father. Ten until he had to see Harry.

Finally, the reply came. All it said was, "Goodnight, John."

* * *

Midnight came. As did one. John hadn't even moved to change out of his clothes. His legs still hung over the edge of the bed, shoes still on. There was a certain paralysis that came with dreading an obligation that was fast approaching. He should have come out a day or two early to give him adequate time to prepare himself, but he had wanted to stay in town as little as he could, partly due to his loathing of his hometown, partly because he would much rather spend the days with Sherlock. There had been a split-second moment during which John had almost asked him to come as well, for moral support. But that would have appeared too intensely desperate, wouldn't it? Bringing someone in to all his baggage so quickly and in such a bleak way. But it was true that the room would have felt more like home with Sherlock in it, even though neither of them made it a habit to stay in each other's London homes for very long. They had a tendency to occupy neutral ground. But John was beyond neutrality.

And as he stared at his phone, free from all notifications of any kind, he couldn't stop himself before typing out and sending: "I miss you."

* * *

Sherlock sat up in his bed in his favorite attic room, protected by the slanted ceilings, the remote quality of living in a space once meant for storage and not human occupation. It was a three floor building, not counting his attic. It was the room they always saved for him. No one else ever wanted it.

The text message was enough to make him set his book aside. Maybe it had been sent to the wrong person? Maybe it was meant for one of the family members he had left London to attend to?

But then the phone rang. An explanation of the mistake, perhaps?

"Not sleeping, John?"

"No. Neither are you, apparently."

"Do I ever?"

"Fair." John sounded tired on the other end of the line, his voice low, well-suited to the late hour. "I hate this, Sherlock."

"You're going to have to be more specific."

"I hate being out of London, I hate the prospect of dealing with this family bullshit, I hate not being able to get any sleep, I hate the quiet, I hate the dark, and I hate being far away from you."

The silence seemed to last forever. "Have you been drinking?"

A rough little laugh cut through the silence. "No, not at all."

"You sound a bit delirious."

"I'm exhausted."

Sherlock hit the speaker button on his phone and set it down in front of him on the bedspread, freeing his hands to rub at his eyes in a mix of elation and frustration. Late night phone calls: always so promising, but always so misleading.

"Then I would suggest reading yourself to sleep, though naturally I am biased in that regard."

"Recommend me something, then."

"Prose or verse?" He stared at the bright light of the phone screen, glancing around the otherwise dimly lit room. Too harsh for the setting, and too harsh for John.

After a lengthy silence, he answered, "Verse."

"Accessible or obscure?"

"Accessible. I don't know what I'll be able to find in this wide place in the road."

"Sentimental or brutal?"

And to Sherlock's surprise, he said, "Sentimental," though he could hear just how much difficulty he had had in getting that one word out.

Sherlock cut his eyes to the novel he had set aside. _The Silent Child_ , with its infuriating dedication. He'd spent the last several hours agonizing over who Harry might be, his own insecurities preying on him in the peaceful solitude, insidious predator waiting for a point of entrance.

"Whitman. Easy to read, straightforward, and _very_ sentimental."

"Sample line?"

Sherlock paused, running through pages of quotations in his mind's eye. " 'Who pensive away from one he lov'd often lay sleepless and dissatisfied at night,/Who knew too well the sick, sick dread lest the one he lov'd might secretly be indifferent to him.' "

It had been the first line to come to mind, and he regretted it as soon as he chose it, his eyes instinctively clamping shut. He sighed to himself quietly enough that the phone would not pick it up, a chorus of _stupid stupid stupid_ playing in his head.

 _Be more transparent, why don't you?_

"Perfect," John said, without a moment's hesitation, though there was an instability in his voice that Sherlock couldn't quite place. Had he truly been lucky enough that John had not read too much into his suggestion? Was he really so blessed this interminable night? "Can always count on you, Sherlock."

"One tries."

"I'm going to go see what I can find, if anything. Otherwise I'll have to resort to reading on my phone. But listen, Sherlock, when I get back, I want to see you. I really do. Not drunk, not delirious. I need you to understand that. Do you?"

"...If you insist."

"What are you up reading, since you're not sleeping either?"

"Oh, nothing much."

"You don't think I buy that, do you?"

"You don't have to. Goodnight, John."

* * *

Sherlock always knew the exact line that could torment him. How much did he know, even if only on a subconscious level? But it didn't matter. Hearing his voice had helped. He would have to call him after he got done dealing with his family. That auditory Valium would surely make it better.

He stumbled out of bed, still fully clothed, his shoes sounding rough once he crossed from rug to wood floor. The entire house was still now, all the guests tucked away, the owners long since gone off to their own bed, somewhere in these creaking walls.

The living room had a few chairs, a sofa, a wall of bookcases, and a fire slowly dying in the hearth, left alone with no one to tend it. John paused there, kneeling down on the bricks, adding wood himself, stoking it until it grew to a blaze again. This place was doing all it could to tame his mind on this anxious night.

Once the fire burned strongly enough to his satisfaction, he moved to the bookcases. All he was missing was a glass of whiskey, he thought.

The shelves were organized alphabetically, but every single inch of every shelf was crammed full, the more literary owner trying to fit a library's worth in this single room. It was endearing, in its way. He knelt like a man in church to examine the bottom shelves, scanning the spines looking for Whitman. And sure enough, accessible as always, there it was, a faded paperback of the collected works. He opened the book to a random page.

 _I will play a part no longer, why should I exile myself from my companions?  
_ _O you shunn'd persons, I at least do not shun you,  
_ _I come forthwith in your midst, I will be your poet,  
_ _I will be more to you than to any of the rest_.

Accessible. Sentimental. Devastating.

But was it him talking to Sherlock, or Sherlock trying to talk to him?

Then and there, he snatched the book and took it back to his room without a second thought or bit of hesitation.

* * *

Sherlock dragged himself out of bed, hands in the pockets of his dressing gown, and paced aimlessly around the attic room for several minutes before descending the stairs and going to the owner's little library. The room was empty, but someone had taken care of the fire before going to bed. He immediately went for the poetry, careful to avoid the H section, horrified at the thought of seeing his own name, looking for Whitman. But there was none. He would have to discuss this with the owner in the morning. Appalling that a man who loved poetry so much shouldn't have a single volume of Whitman.

Instead he quietly opened the front door and stepped out onto the porch, pulling out a cigarette and lighting it. He had spent many nights here doing just this, silently walking around the porch, around the entire building, late at night, just to feel alone in a way that did not hurt. The sheep were baying in the distance, the sound of occasional insects in the fields creeping into this little outpost of civilization. He knew that if he strayed from the porch far enough that the night sky would open up above him like the world's most endless book. But tonight it felt safer under the porch lights, safer sitting on the wooden benches and walking on concrete.

There rest of the house appeared to be blissfully unconscious, with the exception of one other insomniac traveler he came across on the room at the back of the building. Whoever occupied it had the curtains closed, but clearly was hell-bent on maxing out the power grid, light bleeding through the fabric onto the pavement at Sherlock's feet.

All he could think as he stood there letting the cigarette smoke curl further upward into the sky, was how John would have appreciated this light-obsessed phantom, and how, merely by that association, Sherlock cherished them, too.

* * *

John awoke groggy and disoriented, having finally fallen asleep, fully clothed, with the book of Whitman still open on his chest. His phone politely informed him he was running dreadfully late, resulting in him racing through the shower and trying to put himself together enough to appear to be a functional person. It was nearing noon when he went to the front desk and asked his cheerful greeter from the night before, "Is there any way you could call me a cab? I have to get into Glastonbury."

"Of course, Dr. Watson. And how are you this morning?"

"Fine, fine – oh, and I hope I'm not being intrusive, but I was wondering if I could ask you a favor?"

The man hesitated, hand halfway to the phone to call for him. "What is that?"

John pulled the Whitman out of his coat pocket. "I have to deal with some very disagreeable people, and it's going to be a very long day. Would you mind if I carried this with me today? I promise I'll return it."

The owner looked between the book and his face, more serious than John had seen him yet. Perhaps he had appeared more frantic than intended.

"Absolutely. A writer such as yourself knows how to treat a book. I trust you've found it good reading?"

John suddenly realized how quickly he was breathing, how panicked he must have sounded. "Yes. You could say that."

The owner smiled, himself again. "When you return from the disagreeable people, I'll be sure to recommend you some more you'd like."

John only gave him a small nod, incapable of further speech. He went outside to wait for the cab in the fresh air. It was as sunny as one could expect from rural England, but natural light had never been as satisfying to him as artificial. He felt the book in his pocket, a talisman against evil, somehow, new to his life as it was.

The entire ride to his childhood home was spent reading it to avoid having to see reminders of his life fly by him. He knew if he looked up at any point he would recognize the shops, the restaurants, the streets, and the somehow ever-visible specter of the Tor in the distance.

His home was out far enough from the city that it was not part of the typical cramped terraced homes in the middle of town. This had come in handy a number of times, as it was set apart from the others enough that the neighbors had not had to endure the bulk of the Watson family's shouting matches. But it was also where his hatred of this quiet country stemmed from. Because if no one hears it, did it happen? All the other residents of this city went through life aware of each other, aware of their presences and their effects. But the Watsons had always been removed enough that it felt like their actions, their words, had no impact on anyone. No one ever called the police when they were fighting. No one ever heard the slamming doors and scream of car tires on gravel. Their privacy had made their dysfunction as preserved as a museum piece. And he was so sure that was still the case, all these years later.

Of course, he'd been home since his initial departure, for the occasional holiday. But somehow this felt like the first true homecoming, and the nausea in his stomach, the defensiveness already taking root in his head, reminded him of all the reasons he'd fled to London and not looked back. Who even _were_ his parents anymore? Who was _he_?

Eventually, he could no long avoid the stone house rising up in front of him. A small family home. Innocuous to the outside observer. Horrifying to him. He saw his parents' cars as well as Clara's. Harry's was noticeably absent.

He tucked the book back in his pocket as he slammed the door of the cab shut and walked to the door, which, blessedly, was unlocked. It had been years since he'd had any idea where his key was.

Clara materialized immediately, welcoming him, all curly hair and bright eyes and a light perfume that John remembered Harry had always adored. Such an angel, and his father loathed her. Another reason for him to disapprove of Harry.

Lesbian.

Alcoholic.

Married to a _black woman_.

Clara refused to entertain any of his father's snide remarks. She had always been a kill-them-with-kindness sort of girl. She was the only one of them John was genuinely happy to see, and he allowed himself to be wrapped up in her arms without resistance.

John expected to be frustrated at the planning, the discussions, but after all, this wasn't the first time they'd had to come together to keep Harry from killing herself. _That_ part of it felt like another day at the proverbial office. The hellish part was their attempt at playing house, at having dinner and drinks as if they were a normal family, despite missing one of the key family members. Clara and John's mother got along quite well, all things concerned, for which he was grateful. But that did mean that typically the two of them were chatting together, leaving John to deal with the beast that was his father.

He hid successfully for a while, skulking around outside with his drink or wandering through the small tight rooms of the house, even resorting to sitting in his childhood room for a while with the door shut, pretending to not exist. But the room itself didn't allow for quite enough hiding, so for some time, he sat alone inside his closet, door shut in the oddly peaceful darkness, staring at his phone, willing Sherlock's name to appear on it, but unable to hasten that result by reaching out himself. He'd felt foolish, the way he'd talked last night, and he couldn't help but wonder what Sherlock must be thinking of him. Until now he had appeared relatively in control of his own emotions, but this business with his family had stripped away everything but the rawest parts of him. He should have kept his goddamn mouth shut. If there was one thing his father had taught him, it was that.

Eventually, he could no longer escape his father, who found him sitting outside at their picnic table, phone on the wood on the off chance it should light up with an incoming message. John had been reading Whitman by the back porch light, fixated tonight on a short poem titled "As Adam Early in the Morning," for reasons he didn't even want to begin to try to face.

 _As Adam early in the morning,  
_ _Walking forth from the bower refresh'd with sleep,  
_ _Behold me where I pass, hear my voice, approach,  
_ _Touch me, touch the palm of your hand to my body as I pass.  
_ _Be not afraid of my body._

John slammed the book shut and rubbed at his temples, feeling like the physical embodiment of a scream yet to be let loose. He knocked back the remainder of his drink, grateful that his past self had thought well enough to bring the bottle. Ironic. Drinking away anxiety after planning an intervention for an alcoholic. Sherlock would surely find that amusing.

"Leaving the party, son?"

His father sat down across the table from him, the only person who didn't have a drink. He prided himself on his temperance, and used it more than once as yet another way to lord himself over Harry. _He_ didn't have to run to alcohol. _He_ was a stronger, better person than that.

"I'm here, aren't I?" He refilled his glass, partly out of spite.

"How have you been?"

"Do we really have to do this?"

His father looked at him stoically, his eyes then falling to the book on the table, which John had not been quick enough to remove.

"Wasn't he one of those faggot poets?"

John shut his eyes and took a breath. Don't be quick to anger. Don't be like him. "I have no idea, but he _was_ one of the most important poets in literary history, so..."

"Since when do you read poetry?"

"Do you even read at all?"

"Don't take that tone with me," his father said, sharper than his other words had been. Still thought John was sixteen. "Jesus Christ, John, I'm just chatting with you."

"Your chats tend to have ulterior motives, and I'm not a fan of chats that involve slurs you've used against my sister."

His father rolled his eyes. "When will all three of you stop defending her? She made her bed."

"Some human beings are capable of sympathy," John muttered under his breath.

"Sympathy? You turning into Walt Whitman yourself?"

"Shut the fuck up."

His father grinned. _This_ was the malicious look John had been waiting for all night. "It's a fair assumption, son, given how you never mention seeing anyone, and given that you have a dyke for a sister."

"I don't care about sharing my life with you in any capacity. I'm not here for you. I'm here for the wife you browbeat, the daughter you insult, and the daughter-in-law you despise with no cause. _You_ can go fuck yourself. I'm used to your jabs and insults. Try harder." He cut his eyes away from his father to his phone, which flashed with a new message. He picked it up, lighting up the screen, never having been more relieved to see Sherlock's name. The message was nothing out of the ordinary, just more of their casual day-to-day conversation, but it felt like redemption in that moment.

"And who's that you're talking to that's important enough to rudely interrupt a conversation between a man and his son?"

"A man I'd far rather talk to than you," John said, and without another word grabbed his book and his bottle, and walked away.

* * *

When Harry had first come out, it had been nightmarish. Harry had always been a stubborn girl, and had an amazing ability to put her foot in her mouth. Given that she had had a drink before she told them, John expected more of the same. It was, in fact, her first drink, at age sixteen. They hadn't known it would be the beginning of a dependence on liquid courage. But even in retrospect, John couldn't fault her, given the circumstances.

When she'd said, "I have something to tell you," to their parents – John had long since figured out what her secret was – their father immediately laughed and said:

"Don't you always!"

Harry had stood in their living room, that glint coming into her eyes that usually preceded a verbal sparring match between the two of them. John had learned a long time ago that as minors, fighting back was not a luxury they had yet. There would be time enough for that later.

But her defiance only came in a single sentence of blatant truth, spoken more calmly than any words John had ever heard her speak. She stood with her head held high, almost regal. No smart ass remarks, no curse words, no childish yelling.

Their father stood from his chair, becoming different just as she had. Instead of the verbal boxer, he grew stony and silent for what felt like the longest time. John and his mother had watched the two of them stand there staring at each other, Harry's body clearly primed for ducking and running, his father's trying to conceal how instinctively his fists balled up.

It was no surprise when he hit her in the face, and when their mother had tried to stand to come between them, it was John who held her back, knowing that he would just as happily hit her too.

The room had waited for Harry's response, but none came. No words, no physicality, no tears. Her silence was louder than any other options could ever have been.

At which point their father, satisfied with the bruise forming on Harry's cheek, set forth in a tirade that lasted for nearly fifteen solid minutes, berating her, insulting her, cursing her, threatening her, all trying desperately to get a reaction from his daughter, frothing at the mouth like a dog. It was unclear at the time if his words were harming Harry, but they were certainly harming John as much as if their father had said them to him instead. Their mother cringed with every word, both desperate to intervene and knowing from nearly twenty years of this behavior that intervening when he was in this state would only make things worse.

But after the barrage of emotional battery proved ineffective, their father stormed from the house, slamming the door, the sound of his car tires slinging gravel the final slap in the face before silence settled over the house. It was only then that the tension in his sister's body collapsed, and she quickly turned and went to her room, shutting the door so quietly that John could barely hear it. Their mother immediately moved to go to her, but John reached out a hand and shook his head, saying, "No. Let me."

When John shut his sister's bedroom door behind him, he saw her sitting on the floor by her bed, her liquid courage beside her. She was trembling, her arms wrapped around her knees, and after all the years of verbal outbursts and her mouth getting her in trouble, it seemed that speech had been taken from her entirely. She blinked back tears, not very successfully, and wiped them away with the back of her hand. No matter what John said to her, she wouldn't speak, and eventually he had to settle for sitting next to her with his arm around her, letting her rest her head on his shoulder, in perfect silence for hours.

It would be years later, in medical school, that John would hear the story about Genie, the girl who never developed a language, the girl who had been taught to speak in some fashion from scratch, and who had, ultimately, lost nearly all that she had learned and fallen back to silence. And while his professor rambled on about neurolinguistic development, all John could do was read the story in his textbook over and over, about the abusive father who never showed his daughter any sort of affection. And while his classmates reacted to the lecture with the appropriate scientific detachment, John could only see it as one would see a novel. This was not science. This was emotion.

He promised himself that one day he would pay respect to silent daughters.

* * *

When the cab dropped him back off at the hotel, he felt drained and miserable, and was clinging to sanity by texting Sherlock about mundane things. It was still relatively early in the day; he wished it was midnight so all the people would go away.

Instead he found the owner sitting in the living room with one of the many books. There were snacks on the coffee table, which he was, of course, instantly offered. Admittedly, the man's hospitality _did_ help a little. When asked how his day was, John just shook his head, and the owner seemed to understand the evasion, and unlike his father, did not press further.

"How's the Whitman been treating you?" he asked.

John pulled the book from his pocket, smiling wearily. "Well, actually. Thank you. A friend of mine recommended it to me."

"Your friend has good taste."

"Yes, that he does." John looked to the bookshelf, at the countless volumes of poetry shoved together. "His favorite is Neruda."

"Good choice. And yours?"

"Still learning. I'm new to it. But thankfully, I've been steered in good directions." The fire and the soft lighting didn't feel nearly as irritating to him as they had the night before.

"At some point I'll have to let you talk to our poet-in-residence. He's out now, often is, but I'm sure you two would enjoy chatting a bit."

"I'm sure," John said, although in his heart there was only one person he really wanted to talk to. "Which one is your favorite?" he asked, nodding toward the shelves.

A look of delight came over the owner's face, and he got up from his seat and blindly reached for a book, as if the whole conversation had happened before and it was muscle memory. It was a slender black volume, and the man flipped through it with ease. "This book is called _Sic Transit_. I'll show the most popular poem, and then leave you to it."

"Your favorite poem?"

"The _most popular_. The one that got all the attention when it came out. I could never choose a favorite, myself. I love them all." He handed the book to John, who took it carefully, as if it were a live animal, and a venomous one at that. The poem in question was called "The Final Problem." It was very modern in its style, compared to all the classics Sherlock had had John reading. The difference a few centuries made were jarring. Auden and Whitman were roses; this was a knife.

 _They tell me: "Son, do not be wary when love appears."  
_ _But of all our ghosts, the ghosts of our old loves are the worst.  
_ _And what is it, anyway? Human error? A chemical defect?  
_ _I tell them: "This is your heart, and you should never let it rule your head."  
_ _In my experience,  
_ _while intuitions are not to be ignored,  
_ _they place you at a dangerous disadvantage.  
_ _Bitterness is a paralytic; love is a much more vicious motivator.  
_ _I prefer the bitterness, myself._

 _They tell me: "Son, please fall in love."  
_ _But the falling isn't so much the problem as the landing.  
_ _The landing is what kills you,  
_ _the finality of the realization  
_ _that you're a victim of the impact.  
_ _And they say:  
_ _"It's not actually possible for the victim to have done it."  
_ _They say those are the rules.  
_ _The rules are wrong.  
_ _I tell them: "Stop solving murders; save the life instead."_

 _They tell me: "Son, romantic entanglement would complete you as a human being.  
"Why are you so determined to be alone?"  
_ _They talk at length for hours  
_ _about how it's always two people against the rest of the world,  
_ _the thrill of it all,  
_ _blood pumping through their veins.  
_ _But some people have that complex, don't they,  
_ _an id_ _é_ _e fixe?  
_ _They obsess over one thing and can't let go,  
_ _and who am I to pry it from their hands?_

 _Because I have this terrible feeling, from time to time,  
_ _that we all might just be human.  
_ _Even me.  
_ _Even you.  
_ _But none of them understand the complexities,  
_ _seeing versus observing, vision versus sight._

 _What's the worst thing you can do to your very best friends?  
_ _Tell them your darkest secret.  
_ _And isn't that always love?  
_ _The chance that will not last forever?  
_ _Once you open your heart, it can't be closed again,  
_ _just broken._

 _And if you can't handle a broken heart?  
_ _Very telling.  
_ _You've let it rule your head.  
_ _  
They tell me: "It's okay."  
_ _I tell them: "It is what it is."  
_ _Alone is what I've always had.  
_ _Alone, at least, will always protect me._

John stared at the poem, the musings of a very conflicted and cynical person. No roses in this garden.

"Jesus," was all he said.

"I remember when it was first released. The style was relatively new at the time, and the critics latched on to it as a commentary on how we view relationships, and the colder of them believed it was a confirmation that it was all foolish and hopeless, to believe the kind of love you read about in older poems. But I never really saw it that way, myself."

"No?" John ran his fingers over the words, like he could pull the truth from them through touch alone.

"No. And I'm no professor or anything, but it always sounded to me more like someone trying to convince _himself_ that coldness was the better option. And failing. Because no man who has no faith left in love would bother to write about it at such great length at all."

"I've seen longer poems."

"I mean the entire _book_ of them. The poet himself actually said to me once that all poetry was either about death or love, in some capacity or another. I can't help but think he's right."

John flipped to the table of contents, scanning the titles, his eye latching on to one that was titled "Children of Adam."

"...'Children of Adam.' Isn't that from Whitman? I swear I read that phrase earlier."

"Yeah, he likes Whitman. I suppose if I had to choose a favorite, it would be that one. If you read it, you'll see what I mean about whether or not the poet believes in love or coldness."

"You said you'd spoken to the poet? What does he say?"

"Very little. He avoids discussing his work at all. He just comes out here a few times a year, always stays in the same room. Keeps to himself."

" _This_ is from your poet-in-residence?"

"Oh yes, though I knew him as a child, so perhaps my view of him is skewed. Nice young man, really." The owner reached down for his own book and said, "I'll leave you to it. I'm afraid the husband hates it when I'm late for dinner." John could hear the softness in his voice, but he was already walking toward his own room, flipping through the pages hunting down "Children of Adam" like a man hunting a tiger.

Once inside, he leaned against the closed door of his bedroom with the book open to the page and read:

 _There is no_ him _in waking hours,  
_ _in no reality I have found thus far.  
_ _There are crass imitations,  
_ _careless fools  
_ _whose ideas about managing a human heart  
_ _are shoddy at best.  
_ _And while an infamous insomniac,  
_ _I welcome what little sleep I get,  
_ _because_ he _exists there,  
_ _that unreal persona I have tried  
_ _to wish into flesh so many times.  
_ _Does it matter his appearance?  
_ _His profession?  
_ _His background?  
_ _Or does it only matter  
_ _that he reads all words with kindness,  
_ _accepts all flaws with patience,  
_ _and attempts all forms of love with gentleness?  
_

 _People have created for me  
_ _a personality I never truly had.  
_ _The likelihood of these verses being the ones remembered by them  
_ _is slim.  
_ _So I will be blunt:  
_ _No man's desires are unique,  
_ _merely the circumstances under which he finally attains them.  
_ _I have waited many years, fended off many  
_ _who presume to be_ him.  
 _The circumstances are always wrong,  
_ _the mutual attainment, nonexistent.  
_ _So I wait,  
_ _I allow this phantom dream  
_ _to fill these empty spaces  
_ _until I can speak him into  
_ _something tangible,  
_ _something that can touch and speak and feel.  
_ _I'm weary of feeling lips on mine  
_ _that leave only impressions behind that vanish when I wake  
_ _and create nothing but an ache unquenched by any substitutions.  
_ _I long always for that phantom heart,  
_ _just like anyone else.  
_ _Find all the fault in that you wish._

John's breathing was ragged, and suddenly, the weight of the evening descended on him, and he felt near tears, all over this stranger's words. The owner was right: this was not a man who genuinely believed that solitude was the answer. This was a man who tucked away this little poem in the midst of more ambitious ones, talking to an audience that had already left the theater. John had never felt so compelled, so desperate, to hunt down a stranger, to beat on the owner's door to find out when he would be back, when he could try and get some answers from this man who seemed to understand things in a way he barely could himself. Why it mattered so much, John didn't know, but he was overwhelmed in a way he'd never been before, and aside from wanting answers, the only thought in his head was Sherlock's name, over and over and over. The only person he wanted to talk to more desperately than this poet-in-residence, the only person John believed understood any of the things that actually mattered.

But Sherlock was hours away in London. The poet was here.

His hands shook, and he was seconds away from texting Clara to tell her that he had fallen ill and may not make it to the actual intervention tomorrow, head swimming. It wouldn't feel like a complete lie. But he didn't reach for his phone. He only shut the book and turned to its front cover to hunt down the name of the man whose words pulled at him in this little room, who pulled him in nearly as strongly as Sherlock had from the moment he had laid eyes on him at the signing.

And within one second, he went from hysteria to a shock as still and silent as Harry's had been, when his eyes fell upon the author's name.

 _Sherlock Holmes._


End file.
